NANOINDENTATION BEHAVIOR OF THE CuCrZr ALLOY

Abstract

The CuCrZr alloy has been proved to be a promising candidate as structural material for heat sink of plasma facing components, which are used in research focused on design and development of fusion reactors. Micromechanical analysis of materials with application in fusion reactors is important since it correlates materials mechanical properties with its microstructure. Nanoindentation is a powerful tool for nondestructive analysis of the materials mechanical properties at micro- and nano- scale. It provides data related to local hardness, elastic modulus, phase transformations, and creep. Micromechanical properties of the sintered CuCrZr alloy was investigate using nanoindentation method. The commercial, prealloyed CuCrZr powder was cold pressed with 370 MPa pressure, and sintered at 1000⁰C, for 2.5 hours in argon atmosphere. Microstructural characterization was done by X-ray diffraction and scanning microscopy. Nanoindentation measurements were performed before and after plastic deformation (20%) of the sintered CuCrZr alloy. The main goal of this study was to identify effect of the plastic deformation on the mechanical properties, such as hardness and elastic modulus, of the CuCrZr alloy. Obtained results show that plastic deformation has significant impact on elastic modulus of the CuCrZr alloy, while the hardness remains unchanged. Plastically deformed CuCrZr alloy exhibits significant decrease in elastic modulus compared to non-deformed CuCrZr alloy. These findings contribute to better understanding of the influence of plastic deformation on the elastic modulus of CuCrZr alloy.

Acknowledgement: This work was funded by the Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovations of the Republic of Serbia (Contract No. 451-03-136/2025-03/200017) and by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia, Grant No. 7365, Development of dispersion-strengthened metal-based materials for applications in fusion reactor - DisSFusionMat.