Vacuum Cell With a Heated/Cooled Specimen

Irradiation assisted stress corrosion cracking (IASCC) cracking is a corrosion phenomenon in which the material properties, stress, environment, irradiation and material aging effects are combined. Typically, one uses pre-irradiated specimens, but it is possible to irradiate the specimen during the test if an adequate high energy ion beam is available.

Cormet has designed and built a loading device that operates in a vacuum chamber. The environment in the chamber is a vacuum or a controlled gas environment created using mass flow controllers and vacuum pumps. A linear accelerator provides a proton or, indirectly, a neutron beam focused on the specimen attached to the loading device and specimen holders. The specimen can be heated using electric current fed through the specimen holders. The specimen holders are water-cooled as their temperature can rise due to the specimen heating current and the specimen irradiation exposure.

The instrument has specimen holders for flat SSJ – type flat tensile specimens as well as for round tensile specimens. One can attach a cup shaped leakage “basin” under the specimen in case Operator wants to have a hollow specimen filled for example with fluoride, nitrate and chloride salt similar to salts that could be used in molten salt reactors (MSR).