Post-irradiation characterization of PH13-8Mo martensitic stainless steel

The irradiation response of PH13-8Mo stainless steel was measured up to 2.5 dpa at 200 and 300 °C irradiation temperatures. The PH13-8Mo, a martensitic precipitation-hardened steel, was produced by Hot Isostatic Pressing at 1030 °C. The fatigue tests (high cycle fatigue and fatigue crack propagation) showed a test temperature dependency but no irradiation effects. Tensile tests showed irradiation hardening (yield stress increase) of approximately 37% for 200 °C irradiated material tested at 60 °C and approximately 32% for 300 °C irradiated material tested at 60 °C. This contradicts the shift in reference temperature (T0) measured in toughness tests (Master Curve approach), where the ΔT0 for 300 °C irradiated is approximately 170 °C and the ΔT0 for the 200 °C irradiated is approximately 160 °C. This means that the irradiation hardening of PH13-8Mo steel is not suitable to predict the shift in the reference temperature for the Master Curve approach.