Topical day: 10 years of stress corrosion cracking research at SCK•CEN

• Motivation & Scope
• Programme
• Contact
• Venue

Motivation & Scope

Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) of structural materials in nuclear reactor environments poses significant challenges to the nuclear industry for the economic and safe management of ageing reactors as well as to the scientific community, studying the governing mechanisms involved in SCC. To respond to these technical and scientific challenges, SCK•CEN has started a research project, related to stress corrosion of reactor materials in 1996.

The approach taken in this research area at SCK•CEN is multidisciplinary, addressing both the fundamental as the applied scientifc issues, related to SCC in reactor materials. Within this scope, studies on high temperature electrochemistry, mechanical behaviour of materials and irradiation effects on material and environment are combined to develop descriptive models of stress corrosion cracking.
Dedicated experiments are generating input data for the models and provide qualitative and quantitative data to end-users and allow to verify model predictions.

The topical day is intended to bring together international experts in the field of localised corrosion who take an active interest in numerical simulation, corrosion experiments and/or irradation effects related to localised corrosion.

There are four planned sessions: (1) Modelling electrochemical aspects of localised corrosion (2) Electrochemical techniques in high-temperature aqueous environments (3) Mechanical aspects of SCC (4) Radiation damage to reactor internal materials. Each of these sessions will start with a keynote lecture by an authorithy in the field and be followed by a presentation of work performed at SCK•CEN in relation to the kenote lecture.