High temperature creep and deformation microstructures in recrystallized Zircaloy-4

Uniaxial creep tests were performed on recrystallized Zircaloy-4 tensile specimens with an average grain size of 8.5 μm at the stress range of , where E is the elastic modulus, at three temperatures: 500, 550 and 600 °C with an objective to uncover the rate-controlling mechanism(s). A transition in creep mechanism was observed as the stress exponent increased from a value close to 1 at the low stress range to 4.1 at high stresses with the...