2024/01/24 by A. Feichtmayer, Max Boleininger, Feichtmayer, Alexander +17 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · #FOS: Physical sciences #Fusion materials and technologies #Ion-surface interactions and analysis #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Microstructure and mechanical properties
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2401.13385
openalex publication_date 2024/01/24 · openalex created_date 2024/01/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The occurrence of high stress concentrations in reactor components is a still intractable phenomenon encountered in fusion reactor design. We observe and quantitatively model a non-linear high-dose radiation mediated microstructure evolution effect that facilitates fast stress relaxation in the most challenging low-temperature limit. In situ observations of a tensioned tungsten wire exposed to a high-energy ion beam show that internal stress of up to 2 GPa relaxes within minutes, with the extent and time-scale of relaxation accurately predicted by a parameter-free multiscale model informed by atomistic simulations. As opposed to conventional notions of radiation creep, the effect arises from the self-organisation of nanoscale crystal defects, athermally coalescing into extended polarized dislocation networks that compensate and alleviate the external stress.