Open AccessRadiation damage study on graphite from multiple cascade events in molecular dynamics simulation
Author(s) -
Ihda Husnayani,
Muhammad Aziz Majidi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of physics. conference series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1742-6596
pISSN - 1742-6588
DOI - 10.1088/1742-6596/1816/1/012073
Subject(s) - graphite , cascade , molecular dynamics , neutron , materials science , radiation damage , irradiation , nuclear graphite , nuclear reactor , nuclear engineering , neutron temperature , chemical physics , radiochemistry , atomic physics , nuclear physics , chemistry , physics , composite material , computational chemistry , chromatography , engineering
Graphite is one kind of materials commonly used in nuclear reactor as neutron moderator and structural material. During the nuclear reactor operation, graphite is bombarded with high dose of radiation, especially neutron. This condition can cause damage to the graphite’s crystal structure which then leads to the change of the graphite’s physical properties. The alteration of graphite properties is undesirable since it affects the operation and limits the lifetime of nuclear reactor. In this research, radiation-induced damages on graphite were investigated using molecular dynamic simulation. Reactive force-field potential was employed as the interatomic potential in a simulation box containing about five hundred thousand carbon atoms. The first cascade was initiated using primary knock-on atom having kinetic energy of 1 keV. Following the first cascade, multiple cascades were performed in the same simulation box to represent the long-term neutron irradiation on graphite and to observe the effect of this cascade repetition on defect production. The cascade simulation was performed at two variation of temperature. The number of defects was identified using coordination number analysis. It was found that the effect of temperature to the number of defects produced is not significant, while the repetition of cascade does increase the number of defects produced at the end of the cascade simulation.