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Multiscale Modeling of Radiation Hardening

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Handbook of Mechanics of Materials

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Abstract

All materials used in nuclear reactors experience radiation hardening, thus altering significantly their mechanical behavior. Despite the large efforts made by the scientific community to correctly predict the radiation effects on nuclear materials, many difficulties persist in modeling radiation defects. Although radiation hardening is responsible for macroscopic consequences such as embrittlement, its fundamental mechanisms prevail at the atomic scale. The fast development of simulation techniques, especially atomistic simulations, helped in exploring many features of dislocation interactions with radiation-induced defects. For a long time, the obtained results were used to validate theoretical models and to qualitatively explain and rationalize experimental observations.

More recently, with the ubiquity of simulation results and techniques at different scales, quantitative physically based predictions of the mechanical behavior became a realistic objective. Efforts were made to couple simulation results at different scales through the development of scale transition methods and the construction of constitutive equations of the local mechanical behavior. The objective of this chapter is to trace the evolution and progress of this strategy, thus enabling the construction of a chain of physical knowledge across the scales. Details of simulations techniques and methods are not presented. We emphasize on basic achievements of simulations and on the treatment of results with the aim to bridge the different scales of interest for the mechanical behavior.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. EDF – R&D, MMC, Paris, France

    Ghiath Monnet

  2. CEA, DEN, SRMA, Paris, France

    Ludovic Vincent

Authors
  1. Ghiath Monnet
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  2. Ludovic Vincent
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ghiath Monnet .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Materials Testing, Materials Science and Strength of Materials, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Siegfried Schmauder

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Chuin-Shan Chen

  3. UAB Mail BEC 254, Birmingham, AL, USA

    Krishan K. Chawla

  4. Fulton School of Engineering, Arizona State University , Tempe, AZ, USA

    Nikhilesh Chawla

  5. Engineering Mechanics, Zhejiang University , Hangzhou, China

    Weiqiu Chen

  6. Katayanagi Advanced Research Laboratories, Tokyo University of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

    Yutaka Kagawa

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Monnet, G., Vincent, L. (2019). Multiscale Modeling of Radiation Hardening. In: Schmauder, S., Chen, CS., Chawla, K., Chawla, N., Chen, W., Kagawa, Y. (eds) Handbook of Mechanics of Materials. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6884-3_8

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