UT assistant professor Haixuan Xu, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, is leading an international research team on a DOE grant to help with work involving a key component of nuclear reactors. The grant, worth $800,000 over three years, comes as part of the Nuclear Energy University Programs funding, and will be used to work on a pair of particular steel alloys.

“Getting support on this will allow us to investigate and understand the defect evolution in these materials,” said Xu. “What we hope to gain is fundamental insight into the effects of radiation on the alloys so that we can better predict and detect how they will break down over time and adjust the materials accordingly.”

The alloys in question would be used in sodium-cooled reactors. Xu’s research is important because little is known about how the materials stand up to high levels of radiation over time. The first objective will be to use ion radiation to see how the materials sustain damage, while the second will look at the mechanical properties of the alloys post-irradiation to see how the damage might have been avoided. That insight could then be applied to other alloys, spreading the benefits of the research beyond the primary goal.

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