High temperature materials technology research for advanced thermionic systems. Final report

Tungsten and tungsten alloys are candidate materials for the thermionic emitter in the space nuclear power convertor. In this work, the creep behavior of HfC strengthened tungsten alloys was studied. An ultrahigh vacuum, high precision creep test system was constructed for this purpose so that the samples could be heated up to 3,000 K for heat treatment and creep strain could be measured from the creep sample inside the UHV chamber. To explain the creep behavior observed in this dispersion strengthened alloy, a creep model was proposed which accounted for the presence of HfC particles in the form of a back stress generated by these particles. This model was verified by the creep test data of W-0.37 HfC alloys tested under both extruded and recrystallized microstructural conditions. According to this model, the steady state creep of this type of alloys was expected to increase with time due to coarsening of HfC particle and recrystallization of the alloys under high temperatures. In contrast, conventional simple power law creep model only predicts a constant steady state creep for these materials, which does not represent the microstructural evolution of the materials. The creep of solid solution alloys such as W-Re, W-Nb and W-Hf and Mo-Nb was also studied. These materials are expected to be more stable in creep properties due to the absence of coarsening particles. These solid solution alloys, in their single crystalline state, are reported possessing better corrosion resistance over their polycrystalline counterparts. Existing creep data of both solid solution tungsten and molybdenum alloys were re-analyzed. The data of these alloys showed two distinct different creep mechanisms: Class I and Class II. The dominating creep mechanism at low stresses could be explained by the Takuchi-Argon model (Class I). At higher stresses, the data could not be explained by any of the existing creep models. A creep model was thus proposed that contained a shift factor due to the effect of the solute in these alloys. In this model, the Class II creep behavior of these solution alloys were found as a function of the alloy concentration and atomic size mismatch