Round robin exercise on ball indentation technique in India: Indian nuclear reactor materials

•ABI technique has potential for use in the ageing management of the nuclear power plants.•This exercise showed that ABI is sensitive to the change in mechanical properties.•Tensile properties determined using ABI compares well with standard results.•Cold working and heat treatments simulates ageing of material to demonstrate applicability of ABI. This paper presents outcome of round robin exercise on usage of ball indentation technique to predict strength properties of three different materials which are used in Indian nuclear reactors. The main objectives were to evolve a standardized procedure of determining the mechanical properties by the Ball Indentation technique and quantification of the variation in strength and fracture properties due to ageing through such tests. Standard uniaxial tensile tests were also carried out to quantify the differences between strength properties predicted by ball indentation and those determined using conventional tests. Three different materials studied were, carbon-manganese steel (Grade: SA 333Gr.6), stainless steel (SA312 Type 304LN) and zirconium alloy (Zr-2.5Nb). The carbon-manganese steel and stainless steel materials were drawn from extruded pipes while Zr-2.5Nb was drawn from pressure tubes, used in Indian Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors. Ball indentation tests were carried out on materials in as received and in aged conditions. The ageing was simulated artificially. The carbon-manganese steel and stainless steels were subjected to cold work while Zr-2.5Nb alloy was subjected to heat treatment at different temperatures with varying hold times and in some cases with charged hydrogen. The round robin exercise was conducted within different research centers of Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), India. This was a blind exercise in which all the conventional tests were carried out by a group (who was not involved in Ball Indentation tests) after the completion of ball indentation tests by participants. The paper presents the prediction of strength properties, using ball indentation, by different participants. The reasons of scatter in the results among the various participants and differences with respect to conventional test results are discussed in the paper.