Internship on nuclear structural materials research

Introduction

Because of their high strength and fracture toughness Bainitic steels are the main structural materials present-day reactors. While stainless steel such as 316L are proposed as a structural material for high end applications of advanced reactors. Among those applications are also reactor pressure vessels for current generation nuclear power plants. In order to evaluate the applicability of different sorts of Bainitic and Stainless steels for their application in nuclear power plants it is of high importance to thoroughly characterize and understand their microstructure and its influence on the mechanical properties. In this internship a specific batch of material will be investigated and tested.
Due to uniqueness of the available material this topic is suited for a longer term internship (~12 weeks) or a master thesis.

Objectives

This internship is designed as a small project where the candidate follows the material from documentation of the received samples till the final reporting of the gained results. Among the activities are:
- Conducting mechanical tests including independently operating testing machines and analyzing after an appropriate training period.
- Fractography using state of the art optical and electron microscopes
- Reporting of the gained results