Magnetic non-destructive evaluation of hardening of cold rolled reactor pressure vessel steel

Non-destructive test (NDT) of reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steel is urgently required due to the life extension program of nuclear power plant. Here magnetic NDT of cold rolled RPV steel is studied. The strength, hardness and coercivity increase with the increasing deformation, and a good linear correlation between the increment of coercivity, hardness and yield strength is found, which may be helpful to develop magnetic NDT of degradation of RPV steel. It is also found that besides dislocation density, the distribution of dislocations may affect coercivity as well.