On recoil energy dependent void swelling in pure copper: Theoretical treatment

Over the years, an enormous amount of experimental results have been reported on damage accumulation (e.g. void swelling) in metals and alloys irradiated under vastly different recoil energy conditions. Unfortunately, however, very little is known eitherexperimentally or theoretically about the effect of recoil energy on damage accumulation. Recently, dedicated irradiation experiments using 2.5 MeV electrons, 3.0 MeV protons and fission neutrons have been carried out to determine the effect of recoilenergy on the damage accumulation behaviour in pure copper and the results have been reported in Part I of this paper (Singh, Eldrup, Horsewell, Ehrhart and Dworschak 2000). The present paper attempts to provide a theoretical framework within which theeffect of recoil energy on damage accumulation behaviour can be understood. The damage accumulation under Frenkel pair production (e.g. 2.5 MeV electron) has been treated in terms of the standard rate theory (SRT) model whereas the evolution of the defectmicrostructure under cascade damage conditions (e.g. 3.0 MeV protons and fission neutrons) has been calculated within the framework of the production bias model (PBM). Theoretical results, in agreement with experimental results, show that the damageaccumulation behaviour is very sensitive to recoil energy and under cascade damage conditions can be treated only within the framework of the PBM. The intracascade clustering of self-interstitial atoms (SIAs) and the properties of SIA clusters such asone-dimensional diffusional transport and thermal stability are found to be the main reasons for the recoil energy dependent vacancy supersaturation. The vacancy supersaturation is the main driving force for the void nucleation and void swelling. In thecase of Frenkel pair production, the experimental results are found to be consistent with the SRT model with a dislocation bias value of 2 %.