Reactor vessel internals are structures located within the reactor vessel that support and orient the reactor fuel assemblies and direct coolant flow through the core. The core basket is part of the internals structure, which consists of vertical plates that surround the outer faces of the hexagonal peripheral fuel assemblies. The vertical plates are bolted to the edges of horizontal former pla...

In this review, we present our recent results for atomistic mechanisms of damage nucleation and growth and dynamic fracture in silica glass. These results have been obtained with multimillion-to-billion atom, parallel, molecular dynamics simulations of (1) the interaction and coalescence of nanovoids in amorphous silica subjected to dilatational strain and (2) the nucleation, growth and healing...

Steels are being designed with ever decreasing interstitial contents. At the same time, processing technology allows accelerated cooling without excessive distortion or microstructural gradients [1–5]. Lean steels with lower ‘carbon equivalents’ can therefore be manufactured, making fabrication relatively easy. Alloys such as these give uniform microstructures in spite of solidfication–induced ...

It is demonstrated that the removal of material or the creation or extension of cracks always reduces the total potential energy of any non-linear or linear stable elastic body under fixed load and displacement boundary conditions. A weaker statement that crack extension releases potential energy in excess of plastic dissipation is established for stable elastic-plastic bodies, with certain str...

Applications of magnesium alloys as biodegradable orthopaedic implants are critically dependent on the mechanical integrity of the implant during service. In this study, the mechanical integrity of an AZ91 magnesium alloy was studied using a constant extension rate tensile (CERT) method. The samples in two different geometries that is, circumferentially notched (CN), and circumferentially notch...