Critical experiments for predicting fatigue crack growth behaviour in PWRs

疲劳是影响压水堆重要部件完整性的主要退化机制之一。然而，金属疲劳也是一个跨越力学和材料科学边界的挑战性科学现象。有必要进行关键的实验，以深入了解微观结构的机制在发挥作用，并评估不同的微观结构和环境对高完整性PWR组件的使用寿命的影响。这个博士项目的目标是进行机械和材料表征实验，以揭示疲劳裂纹的成核和生长，包括环境的作用。这包括机械测试以及EBSD、EDX和DIC等高分辨率表征技术，这些技术将用于表征晶体中的微观结构、化学性质和存储变形，例如晶粒取向、位错密度和残余应力分布。该学生预计将与同伴计算博士项目密切合作。

Fatigue is one of the key degradation mechanisms affecting the integrity of important PWR components. However, metallic fatigue is also a challenge scientific phenomenon that crosses the boundaries of mechanics and materials science. There is a need to conduct critical experiments to gain insight into the microstructural mechanisms at play and assess the influence of different microstructures and environments on the service life of high integrity PWR components.The goal of this PhD project is to conduct mechanical and materials characterisation experiments to shed light into fatigue crack nucleation and growth, including the role of the environment. This includes mechanical testing and also high-resolution characterisation techniques such as EBSD, EDX, and DIC, which will be used to characterize the microstructure, chemistry and stored distortion in crystals, e.g. grain orientation, dislocation density and residual stresses distribution. The student is expected to collaborate closely with a companion computational PhD project.