SP-D: Materials health monitoring and non-destructive examination for nuclear materials

Coordinator:   M. Rabung - Fraunhofer IZFP

SP Coordination team members:  A. Bohnstedt - KIT, M. Malá - CVR, E. Demaldent - CEA

The newly created sub-programme on materials health monitoring and non-destructive examination for nuclear materials shall be a cross-cutting sub-programme with the other SPs.

While SP1, SP2, SP3 and SP4 provide knowledge on material development, laboratory methods for materials characterisation and microstructure simulation tools, the proposed sub-programme focusses on the in-situ characterization of the material degradation in the materials and the corresponding components addressed in SP1, SP2, SP3 (experimentally) and SP4 (simulation-based).

The proposed sub-programme aims to defining, developing and optimizing multi-parameter non-destructive approaches for the in-situ characterization of the material degradation in materials and components for future NPPs, which enable to capture material properties (material DNA) right from the start of the material development until its end of life (end of operation).

The development of robust technologies capable of determining in-service material performance depends on both, model accuracy and data reliability. Hence, there is a need for collecting experimental reliable key data captured under realistic operation conditions. Non-destructive methods for materials characterization of components during operation can be very helpful to in-situ assess the actual material degradation of different components and provide such key data.

Additionally, the in-situ evaluation of the health condition of components can be performed by means of NDE only.

This new SP shall connect also with the digitalization trend in the nuclear (and not only) industry. The proposed SP focused on materials health monitoring and non-destructive examination for nuclear materials shall bridge the gap between materials microstructure, properties, processing parameters, modelling activities focused on aspects of in-service material degradation on one side and in-service inspection and condition monitoring of NPP components on the other side.