Technical Meeting on Advanced Technology Fuels:Progress on their Design, Manufacturing, Experimentation, Irradiation, and Case Studies for their Industrialization, Safety Evaluation, and Future Prospects

Investigation of the temperature-dependent failure processes in a PVD Cr-coated ZIRLO nuclear fuel cladding material using real-time X-ray micro-tomography imaging

29 Oct 2025, 09:00

25m

Vienna International Center

Experimental Testing of ATF Materials and Validation Database 2

Speaker

Dr Guanjie Yuan

Description

Zirconium alloys (Zircaloys) are widely used as fuel cladding in LWRs but suffer rapid oxidation in high-temperature steam, compromising structural integrity. Cr coatings, especially those applied via physical vapour deposition (PVD) method, offer improved oxidation resistance and mechanical stability. According to open literature, the 3D real-time failure process of such material under mechanical loading at extreme temperatures remains poorly understood.
This study investigates the deformation and fracture of one PVD Cr-coated Optimized ZIRLO® cladding material under C-ring compression loading using real-time synchrotron X-ray computed tomography (XCT) at temperatures up to 950 °C in argon atmosphere, and post-tested SEM and EBSD analyses were performed to support XCT observations and assess temperature-dependent damage mechanisms.

Presentation materials

IAEA conference-Guanjie -2025.10.pptx

IAEA entended abstract-Guanjie Yuan#22.pdf