Aspects of microstructure evolution under cascade damage conditions

The conventional theoretical models describing the damage accumulation, particularly void swelling, under cascade damage conditions do not include treatments of important features such as intracascade clustering of self-interstitial atoms (SIAs) and one-dimensional glide of SIA clusters produced in the cascades. Recently, it has been suggested that the problem can be treated in terms of 'production bias' and one-dimensional glide of small SIA clusters. In the earlier treatments a 'mean size approximation' was used for the defect clusters and cavities evolving during irradiation. In the present work, we use the 'size distribution function' to determine the dose dependence of sink strengths, vacancy supersaturation and void swelling as a function of dislocation density and grain size within the framework of production bias model and glide of small SIA clusters. In this work, the role of the sessile-glissile loop transformation (due to vacancy supersaturation) on the damage accumulation behaviour is included. The calculated results on void swelling are compared with the experimental results as well as the results of the earlier calculations using the 'mean size approximation'. The calculated results agree very well with the experimental results. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.