NDT Methods Of The Pressure In The Zircaloy-4 Tube And Effect Of Ion Implantation On Its Corrosion Behavior

The Non-destructive Testing (NDT) methods of the measurement of the pressure in zircaloy-4 tube and the effect of ion implantation on its corrosion behavior were discussed in this paper. The pressure of helium in the nuclear fuel element pipe is a very important parameter. To replace the currently used destructive pressure measurement way, two new NDT means: strain method and heat-transfer method were introduced and their feasibility was discussed in this paper. It was shown that the result of the strain method coincided well with the outcome of the theory calculation and its results'precision was high to some extent, however, the installation of the strain gauges was a little complex. For the method of heat-transfer, according to experiment results and numerical simulation, some key factors that impact the test's results directly were brought forward and several advice were proposed for further research.In order to simulate the corrosion properties of zircaloy-4 under the neutron irradiation, krypton ions were employed to bombard the surface of zircaloy-4. It was shown that with the irradiation dose increasing, the specimen's corrosion resistance increased firstly and decreased subsequently, which was mainly due to the amorphous phase appeared at the beginning and polycrystalline structure came into being later. SPAS was employed to analyze the defect distribution of zircaloy-4 irradiated by argon ions and its annealing behavior was also discussed.Furthermore, ion implantations, such as N, Ti element, were performed to improve the corrosion properties of zircaloy-4. The electrochemical behavior of the post-implantation zircaloy-4 specimen was carried out; meanwhile, the defect distribution of the zircaloy-4 specimen irradiated by titanium ions was acquired by means of SPAS.