Instrumented indentation at elevated temperatures for determination of material properties of fusion relevant materials

The testing of small sized samples is an important advantage of the instrumented indentation with respect to the investigation of materials for fusion application. A continuous recording of the indentation depth and force enables a determination of mechanical properties of the tested material. In this study, the results of the high temperature experiments with a custom made indentation device are presented. The reduced activation ferritic martensitic steel EUROFER is investigated in an unirradiated state with spherical tips and for the first time Vickers tips at increasing temperatures up to 500 degrees C. The indentation procedure is numerically simulated at different temperatures and the corresponding load-displacement-data are compared with the experimental results. A quantification of the influence of variations of the indentation tip radius is presented as well. Finally, the operation of the indentation device with respect to the restrictions of the Hot Cell environment is discussed. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).