1988 Volume 25 Issue 2 Pages 153-157
A study was made to investigate the transgranular fracture mechanism of zirconium in an iodine environment using the data from stress corrosion cracking (SCC) tests of irradiated zirconium-lined tubes and the analyses of the force on dislocations in zirconium liner during SCC testing.
Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and metallurgical observations on incipient cracks indicated that the transgranular fracture, or cleavage facet, might occur near the prism planes {1010} of the hexagonal close-packed (hcp) lattice.
Large failure strain of zirconium-lined tubes suggested that plastic strain might be prerequisite for the cracking of zirconium in an iodine environment. And it also indicated that the cracking might be a kind of corrosion assisted one and not pure SCC. Therefore, an analysis was made to study available slip modes for the cracking. The results showed that a slip of the dislocation with Burgers vector b= 1/3 <1120> on {1010} might be responsible for the microcrack formation of zirconium.
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