Sophia Ungermann
DPhil Student
Understanding Irradiation Embrittlement of Reactor Pressure Vessel Steels Using Micromechanical Methods and Atom Probe Tomography
Following the group’s tradition of looking at reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steels, my DPhil focuses on the effects of neutron irradiation on the microstructure and mechanical properties of these steels. Like the previous projects, I am interested in the clustering of manganese-nickel and silicon rich precipitates (MNSPs) and their effect on the properties of those alloys. This will be combined with nanoindentation and EBSD to investigate the change in hardness in RPV steels in comparison to the microstructure observed using APT. My supervisors are Prof Michael Moody, Dr Paul Bagot and Dr Christina Hofer from the APT Group, and Dr Anna Kareer from the Oxford MicroMechanics Group.
