Grain boundary engineering of austenitic steel PNC316 for use in nuclear reactors

Austenitic stainless steel PNC316 was subjected to grain boundary engineering (GBE). It was found that the grain boundary engineered PNC316 (PNC316-GBEM) had a coincidence site lattice (CSL) fraction of 86% and that the network of random grain boundaries was perfectly divided by the CSL boundaries. The thermal stability and the void swelling behavior of PNC316-GBEM were investigated by means of SEM and TEM analyses. After thermal aging at 973K for 100h, structural changes were observed neither in the grain boundary networks of PNC316-GBEM nor in another sample of PNC316-GBEM subjected to 20% additional cold rolling, PNC316-GBEM20%CW. PNC316-GBEM showed a higher void swelling rate than as-received PNC316 (PNC316-AS). However, with additional 20% cold rolling after GBE, the void swelling rate decreased to as low as that of PNC316-AS.