Teaching
NE 409/509 Nuclear Materials: 3 credits.
Prerequisite: MSE 201.
Introduces students to properties and selection of materials for nuclear steam supply systems and to radiation effects on materials. Implications of radiation damage to reactor materials and materials problems in nuclear engineering are discussed. Topics include an overview of nuclear steam supply systems, crystal structure and defects, dislocation theory, mechanical properties, radiation damage, hardening and embrittlement due to radiation exposure and problems concerned with fission and fusion materials. Students cannot receive credit for both 409 and 509.
NE/MSE 757 Radiation Effects on Materials: 3 credits
Prerequisite: NE/MSE 409/509 or equivalent
This is an advanced course on nuclear materials for students with background in fundamentals of materials, defects and dislocation theory, and mechanical properties. It is important for students to refer to various books, monographs, reviews and journal papers on many of the subject areas. The objective of the course is to discuss the unique changes that occur in materials under irradiation, so to understand the limitations put on nuclear reactor operations and reactor design by materials performance. In the first part of the course we briefly review basic concepts of physical metallurgy necessary to develop an understanding of the relationship between microstructure and nuclear material properties outside of irradiation. In the second part of the course, we describe the process of radiation damage formation, present the methods to calculate atomic displacements produced by exposure to irradiation, and describe the microstructural evolution that results from irradiation both qualitatively, and quantitatively through the use of rate theory. In the third part, we show how irradiation-induced changes in the microstructure evolve into changes in macroscopic behavior of the material. Dimensional changes due to irradiation (swelling, creep and irradiation growth) are discussed, as well as the effects of irradiation on mechanical properties and irradiation-induced microchemistry changes and phase transformations.