Test methodologies for determining high temperature material properties of thin walled tubes

This report presents briefly the test methods used, within the in the EERA JPNM Pilot Project TASTE, for defining the tensile and creep material properties relevant to the integrity of nuclear fuel claddings. These properties are challenging to extract from thin walled tubes since the standard test methods use specimens that require minimum material thicknesses in the order of 10 mm or more. In contrast the thin walled material properties are acquired through a number of testing techniques and evaluation methodologies suitable for the thin walled product form. In this report the different test methods and their data assessment requirements are briefly described. The test methods evaluated here comprise sub-size (curved specimen) tensile testing (ST) of the cladding tube, micro specimen (dog-bone) tensile testing (MT), Small Punch testing (SP), Segmented Expanding Cone Mandrel tests (SCM), ring tension (RT) and ring compression (RC) tests and internal pressure testing (IP).