Advanced Mechanical Testing System for Highly Irradiated Materials

Install, test, and refine the AMT to perform comprehensive, high throughput, automatic mechanical characterization using irradiated miniature tensile specimens at INL hot cell facilities. The solution should aid in dramatic reduction of irradiated material waste, remote operation within hot cell environments, and stochastic characterization. It is vital that thorough evaluation and refinement to improve the AMT be conducted over a period of at least one year using irradiated specimens to validate its functionality, improve its features, and develop long term preventative maintenance procedures be developed to ensure the AMT function and data fidelity. An Advanced Mechanical Test (AMT) system incorporated with full-field Digital Image Correlation (DIC) capability has been designed, prototyped, and validated with miniature tensile specimens and compared to ASTM standards. Radiation shielding, modular design, and strategically locating critical electronic components behind large volume of metal have been implemented with feedback from INL. Miniature specimen testing has been offered as a service to commercial partners with excellent results. ASTM and other standards organizations have been approached to make the specimen design from this project into a standard that can be used by a wide range of industries. Additional contacts have been approached through white paper, brochure, and other technical publications and have been received well with many contacts being made that could potentially lead to testing services, product sales, and the widespread adoption of the AMT and miniature specimen testing.