Insights from microstructure and mechanical property comparisons of three pilgered ferritic ODS tubes

To develop advanced nuclear fuel claddings, two oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) alloys were designed, manufactured, and evaluated. First, 12 %Cr alloy, is an ODS-version of ferritic steel, and second, 10 %Cr-6 %Al alloy, is a high-strength version of accident tolerant iron-chrome-aluminum alloy. Their properties and performance were compared with "classical" ODS material, 14 %Cr alloy 14WYT. Thin-walled (∼500 µm wall thickness) tubes were manufactured successfully using the pilgering technique. For all alloys, axial tensile specimens exhibited high tensile strength (>1 GPa) and reasonable plastic strains (10–17%). Ring tensile specimens, conversely, showed limited ductility (∼1%) with similar strengths to those measured in the axial orientation. The grain size, precipitate dispersion characteristics, and dislocation densities were then used to estimate yield strengths that were compared against room temperature axial and ring-pull tensile test data. The strengthening models showed mixed agreement with experimentally measured values due to the highly anisotropic microstructures of all three ODS tubes. These results illustrate the need for future model optimization to accommodate non-isotropic microstructures associated with components processed using rolling/pilgering approaches. In all cases, atom probe tomography and energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy demonstrated that ODS structure survived multiple pilgering operations, and precipitate microstructure evolution matched well the state-of-the-art nanoprecipitate coarsening models.