Effect of laser and/or electron beam irradiation on void swelling in SUS316L austenitic stainless steel

Large amounts of void swelling still limit the application of austenitic stainless steels in nuclear reactors due to radiation-induced lattice point defects. In this study, laser and/or beam irradiation was conducted in a temperature range of 573-773 K to explore the suppression of void swelling. The results show that during sequential laser-electron beam irradiation, the void nucleation is enhanced because of the vacancy clusters and void nuclei formed under pre-laser irradiation, causing greater void swelling than single electron beam irradiation. However, simultaneous laser-electron dual-beam irradiation exhibits an obvious suppression effect on void swelling due to the enhanced recombination between interstitials and vacancies in the temperature range of 573-773 K; especially at 723 K, the swelling under simultaneous dual-beam irradiation is 0.031% which is only 22% of the swelling under electron beam irradiation (0.137%). These results provide new insight into the suppression of void swelling during irradiation.