EUROFER97 steel plates for nuclear fusion applications are usually manufactured by hot rolling and subsequent heat treatments: (1) austenitization at 980 °C for 30 min, (2) rapid cooling and (3) tempering at 760 °C for 90 min. An extended experimental campaign was carried out with the scope of improving the strength of the steel without a loss of ductility. Forty groups of samples were prepared by combining cold rolling with five cold reduction ratios (20, 40, 50, 60 and 80%) and heat treatments at eight different temperatures in the range 400–750 °C (steps of 50 °C). This work reports preliminary results regarding the microstructure and mechanical properties of all the cold-rolled samples and the effects of heat treatments on the samples deformed with the greater CR ratio (80%). The strength of deformed samples decreased as heat treatment temperature increased and the change was more pronounced in the samples cold-rolled with greater CR ratios. After heat treatments at temperature up to 600 °C yield stress (YS) and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of samples deformed with CR ratio of 80% were significantly larger than those of standard EUROFER97 but ductility was lower. On the contrary, the treatment at 650 °C produced a fully recrystallized structure with sub-micrometric grains which guarantees higher strength and comparable ductility. The work demonstrated that EUROFER97 steel can be strengthened without compromising its ductility; the most effective process parameters will be identified by completing the analyses on all the prepared samples.
Effect of rhenium irradiations on the mechanical properties of tungsten for nuclear fusion applications