Fracture behavior of 9Cr nanostructured ferritic alloy with improved fracture toughness

Nanostructured ferritic alloys (NFAs) have been considered as primary candidate materials for both fission and fusion reactors because of their excellent creep and irradiation resistances. It has been shown that high temperature fracture toughness could be significantly improved by appropriate thermo-mechanical treatments (TMTs). This article focuses on the static fracture behaviors of newly developed 9Cr NFAs with improved toughness. Optimal TMTs resulted in high fracture toughness at room temperature (>250MPa√m) and in retaining higher than 100MPa√m over a wide temperature range of 22–700°C. Significant differences were found in fracture surfaces and fracture resistance (J–R) curves after different TMTs. Unique fracture surface features such as shallow nanoscale facets decorated with shear lips and flake-like grains were observed in high toughness specimens.