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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 199 records · Page 11
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Influence of Process Parameters and Alloy Composition on Crack Mitigation in Selective Laser Melting

Microcracking and residual stresses are key limitations of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), an additive manufacturing (AM) technique that uses a high power laser to consolidate successive layers of metal powder. For tungsten, these microcracks find their origin in the combination of a ductile-to-brittle transition (DBT) between 200°C and 400°C and high residual stresses. This work utilized in situ high speed video to capture the cracking mechanisms, and combined the experimental results with thermomechanical modeling to unveil correlations between crack network morphology and process parameter-related variables, such as the local temperature and residual stress distributions. Consequently, preheating and alloying with rare earth oxides were adopted as possible crack mitigation strategies, the efficacy of which was tested against the initial fundamental baseline results. Preheating temperatures above 500°C eliminated all cracking, though this threshold is expected to be higher when tungsten powder (higher oxygen content) is introduced. Alloying can serve as an active oxygen getter in the system, but the rare earth oxides in this work were too large to have significant contributions to crack-mitigation.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Measuring the residual stress and stress-corrosion cracking susceptibility of additively manufactured 316L by ASTM G36-94

Residual stress is a contributor to stress-corrosion cracking (SCC) and a common byproduct of additive manufacturing (AM). In this work, the relationship between residual stress and SCC susceptibility in laser powder bed fusion AM 316L stainless steel was studied through immersion in saturated boiling magnesium chloride per ASTM G36-94. The residual stress was varied by changing the sample height for the as-built condition and additionally by heat treatments at 600, 800, and 1200 °C to control, and in some cases reduce, residual stress. In general, all samples in the as-built condition showed susceptibility to SCC with the thinner, lower residual stress samples showing shallower cracks and crack propagation occurring perpendicular to melt tracks due to local residual stress fields. The heat-treated samples showed a reduction in residual stress for the 800 and 1200 °C samples. Both were free of cracks after >300 hours of immersion in MgCl 2 , while the 600 °C sample showed similar cracking to their as-built counterpart. Geometrically necessary dislocation (GND) density analysis indicates that the dislocation density may play a major role in the SCC susceptibility.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Effect of dissolved oxygen level on stress corrosion cracking susceptibility of structural steels

Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) is a potential risk in structural steels used for heat exchanger and circulation loop in LWR. Generally, SCC susceptibility of structural steels increases with increasing the level of dissolved oxygen (DO) in circulating water, but DO tolerance below which no SCC risk is present could differ by the type of steel. To investigate the DO effect on SCC susceptibility, T23, T24 and T91 steels under static load were exposed to stagnant and circulating water at 200°C with varying DO levels. The results indicated that among the tested steels, the SCC susceptibility was highest in T91 but lowest in T23 which did not exhibit crack initiation with 100 ppb DO. T24 showed no cracking with 50 ppb DO but cracked with 100 ppb DO, implying intermediate SCC susceptibility in between T23 and T91. Based on the cracking results and hardness data, SCC susceptibility in the tested steels is considered driven by corrosion which was initiated/affected by DO in the water.

Jun, Jiheon↗
DOE OSTI2025

XFEM Development for Modeling Crack Growth in Prototypical Welded Components

Nuclear power plant components are subjected to harsh operating environments that can lead to multiple degradation mechanisms in which fracture can play a prominent role. Predicting crack growth is important for assessing the integrity of welded components. The extended finite element method (XFEM) is an important tool for modeling such crack growth, and XFEM capabilities have been developed within the MOOSE framework. This report documents work in the MOOSE XFEM module to model fractures in three-dimensional representations of components using a topologically two-dimensional mesh to define cutting planes. Crack growth algorithms have been implemented to evolve the cutting mesh based on equations for stress corrosion cracking. Additionally, several usability and robustness improvements have been developed to enable three-dimensional fracture simulations. The cutting algorithms were demonstrated on a three-dimensional model of a prototypical reactor component undergoing stress corrosion cracking driven by idealized weld residual stresses. This is an incremental step toward using this capability to model more complex components with residual stresses computed through welding process simulations.

42 - ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Silver-carbon-nanotube composite metallization for increased durability of silicon solar cells against cell cracks

One of the ways to reduce the cost of solar electricity is to reduce the degradation rate of solar modules and extend their lifetime well beyond 30 years. The extended module lifetime translates to increased bankability of utility-scale PV projects. In this work, we specifically address cell-crack-induced degradation by introducing crack-tolerant metallization. Herein, we make use of low-cost, multi-walled carbon nanotubes embedded in commercial screen-printable silver pastes as a highly integratable engineering solution. When the carbon nanotubes are appropriately functionalized and incorporated into commercial silver pastes, the resulting metal contacts on solar cells, after screen-printing and firing, show exceptional fracture toughness. These composite metal contacts possess increased ductility, electrical gap-bridging capability greater than 50 µm, and “self-healing” to regain electrical continuity even after cycles of complete electrical failure under large strain. While providing crack-tolerant mechanical properties, the composite paste delivers similar beginning-of-life cell performance as the conventional silver paste.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Crack detection in fuel cell electrodes using a spatial filtering technique for overcoming noisy backgrounds

Image processing is a powerful tool that allows for rapid and automated data parsing in settings that occupy large variable spaces and require large data sets. Feature detection on difficultly discerned backgrounds is a subset of image processing that facilitates the extraction of quantitative metrics from otherwise subjective data. Crack detection and quantification is an important capability in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell quality control, failure analysis, and optimization. This work presents a technique to perform crack detection and quantification which overcomes challenges faced by commonly used image segmentation techniques. We demonstrate the use of a geometrically filtered noise‐level detection technique to select a binary threshold value from which we then quantify how cracked a sample is. Furthermore, we demonstrate the accuracy of our technique using programmatically generated test images of known crack amounts and their performance on real‐world fuel cell catalyst layer samples.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗
DOE OSTI2020

The roles of yield strength mismatch, interface strength, and plastic strain gradients in fatigue crack growth across interfaces

An irreversible cohesive zone model was used to understand how plastic strain gradients and yield strength mismatches affect fatigue crack growth across bi-material and multilayer interfaces for a range of interface strengths. Parametric studies identified regimes of penetration through the interface, deflection into the interface, and a transition where cracks extend on both paths. Plastic strain gradients strongly influence the transition regime, and a yield strength mismatch is necessary to cause deflection. For crack growth across an interlayer, interactions between the interfaces occur when the crack-tip plastic zone spans the interlayer. Plastic strain gradients promote penetration through the interlayer.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

A note on the instability and pattern formation of shrinkage cracks in viscoplastic soils

In this work we present a theoretical study on the conditions for the onset of cracks, as well as the corresponding pattern formation, in saturated viscoplastic soils under isotropic loading (extension). The type of stress applied is left unspecified, to cover a variety of loadings including shrinkage due to desiccation, isotropic thermal expansion, mechanical loading and so forth. By treating the saturated soil as rigid viscoplastic, we obtain a 2D extension of the Cnoidal Waves equations (Veveakis and Regenauer-Lieb, 2015). By numerically solving the corresponding boundary value problem, we retrieve conditions for the onset of cracking instability in 2D loading, and identify the characteristic spacing between cracks to be a length scale combining all the hydro-mechanical parameters of the problem. Finally, we show that in a rectangular slab of clay under isotropic extension, patterns of triangular, rectangular and hexagonal cracks can tessellate the domain, with the hexagonal pattern being the energetically favored, as it minimizes the free energy of the system.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

The physics of desiccation cracks 1: Ductile fracturing and dependence on relative humidity

Ductile deformation is ubiquitously found in the shrinkage of geomaterials. The existence of ductility requires elastoplastic mechanics when analyzing the structure deformation under external stress. Here, in this work, we explore the physics of ductile fracturing based on the results from desiccation experiments and triaxial tests. By using the digital image correlation (DIC) method to generate the strain maps of samples undergoing desiccation cracking under different relative humidities, we obtain results showing the previously postulated Cnoidal Wave ductile failure patterns propagating under atmospheric condition-controlled crack velocities. We then correlate these observations with rate-dependent plasticity models calibrated through triaxial tests undergoing several unloading–reloading cycles and velocity stepping. This work demonstrates the necessity to consider ductility in soil cracking, indicating that the formation of crack patterns in soil desiccation is a slow and predictable process.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Multiphysics modeling of SOFC performance degradation caused by interface delamination and active layer cracking

In solid oxide device operation, delamination and cracking cause more catastrophic damage to cell life than other degradation mechanisms, leading to more rapid cell failure. The electrochemical performance degradation caused by electrode/electrolyte interface delamination and active layer cracking were investigated through in-house developed three-dimensional multiphysics simulations. Here the multiphysics simulations, fully calibrated against experimental datasets for button cells in a previous study, were extended to quantitatively investigate the effects of electrode/electrolyte interface delamination and active layer cracking. The simulated polarization curves and impedance behavior with various levels of delamination and cracking provided insights of the performance degradation. Furthermore, the local current distributions within the cell were analyzed for three different operating modes: constant voltage, constant current, and constant power. Finally, a practical strategy was proposed to mitigate the performance degradation in the realistic cell operations, extending overall cell lifetime.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2022

Leak-tight crack repair for 304L stainless steel using friction surfacing

Here, friction surfacing (FS) was investigated as a method for sealing 50 μm wide thru-cracks in 3-mm-thick 304L stainless steel (304L) plate. Friction surfacing was performed using two sizes of 304L consumable rod, with diameters of 9.52 mm and 12.7 mm, on two substrate conditions (clean and oxidized). Friction surfacing was able to deposit a 600 μm thick coating and repair cracks to a depth of 100 μm - 200 μm below the original surface, when using the 12.7-mm-diameter consumable rod for both substrate conditions. Helium leak rates of 10 -10 atm-cc/s were achieved on crack repairs, designating them as leak-tight by the ANSI N14.5 standard. Optical and scanning electron microscopy were used to investigate the coating microstructure and bond interfaces. In this study, the 12.7-mm-diameter rod performed better with disruption of the oxide layer on the oxidized substrate and providing a more homogenous coating. Mechanical properties of the coated samples were evaluated by performing micro-indentation, tensile, bending, and adhesion testing. Higher hardness in the coatings was observed due to the fine equiaxed grains resulting from dynamic recrystallization. Complete consolidation of plastically deformed material on the substrate and a strong diffusion bond across the interface was observed. This was reflected in tensile and bending properties of the FS coatings being comparable to those of uncoated specimen. No delamination of the FS coating was observed during adhesion testing. The results demonstrate that friction surfacing is a viable option to seal cracks in stainless steels.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

An integrated analytical and experimental study of contact acoustic nonlinearity at rough interfaces of fatigue cracks

This paper presents an analytical model that describes the relationship between interface stiffness and separation of rough interfaces such as fatigue cracks. The contact acoustic nonlinearity at the interface is simulated by a quasi-static model based on Hertzian contact theory. The model is validated using the results of dynamic acoustoelastic testing (DAET) with a Rayleigh wave probe on fatigue cracks in two aluminum alloy samples. One novel aspect of this work is that all the required geometrical parameters for the model are acquired directly from the aperture profile of real cracks extracted from their scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. Also, the separation of the crack faces during dynamic perturbation is independently measured using a 3D laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV). In addition, using DAET allows for an unprecedented direct comparison between experimental and analytical results. Overall, this is because unlike conventional nonlinear ultrasonic tests that are based on measuring the amplitude of higher harmonics, DAET outputs directly the strain-dependency of transmission and time delay of ultrasonic waves propagating across the interface. The model is found in good qualitative agreement with the experimental results, although the predictions tend to underestimate the variation of transmission coefficient and time delay. We conduct a sensitivity analysis to investigate the influence of different assumptions and simplifications on model predictions.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Suppression of Helium Induced Cracking in Laser Repair Welding of Highly Irradiated Stainless Steels

Welding repair of irradiated nuclear reactor materials such as austenitic stainless steels used for the reactor internals has been challenging due to irradiation generated helium in the material matrix over an extended period of time. In this study, improved laser welding techniques, including the novel Auxiliary Beam Stress Improved (ABSI) technique that proactively manages the stresses during laser repair welding is investigated to substantially reduce or avoid the occurrence of intergranular helium-induced cracking (HeIC). Here, laser weld cladding, with and without ABSI technique, was applied to deposit weld metal on irradiated stainless steel (Type 304 L) blocks with various helium concentrations up to approximately 20 atomic parts per million (appm). Welded samples were cross-sectioned and analyzed using optical and electron microscopes. It was found that, with the improved laser welding techniques, no macroscopic (millimeter-sized) cracks were observed in any of the samples. Microscopic (less than 50 μm) cracks were present in the heat affected zone. Statistical analysis on the sample with the highest helium concentration (~20 appm) reveals that the ABSI technique could effectively reduce the size and amounts of microscopic cracks.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Identifying multiple synergistic factors on the susceptibility to stress relaxation cracking in variously heat-treated weldments

The 347H austenitic stainless steel has been widely used for pressure vessels and pipeline (PVP) applications due to its excellent creep and corrosion resistance, which fit ideally to the harsh conditions in petrochemical industries, fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, and modern energy storages. However, a failure mode has been commonly observed with cracks emerging at the heat affected zone (HAZ) of weldments during post-weld heat treatment (PWHT) or under intermediate to high temperature service conditions. This phenomenon is termed as Stress Relaxation Cracking (SRC) since the purpose of PWHT is to relieve the welding-induced residual stress fields, or as Stress Age Cracking (SAC) if failure happens during service. A leading literature explanation of this failure suggests that the residual stress relaxation and the precipitation dissolution and/or re-precipitation occur in the same temperature range, which can lead to locally high strains and thus to crack at the grain boundaries. Since in situ spatial measurements of residual stress fields, microstructural evolution, and failure processes are nearly infeasible, this work recourses to a micromechanical finite element framework that models the high temperature failure as the nucleation and growth of grain boundary cavities, whereas various parameters such as thermomechanical loading history and its evolution, the competition of grain-interior dislocation creep and grain-boundary diffusion in failure lifetime, and microstructural heterogeneities (such as the precipitate free zone near grain boundaries) can be quantitatively incorporated. It can be concluded from these microstructure-explicit simulations that an accurate knowledge of residual stress evolution and a carefully calibrated set of material constitutive parameters are the essential prerequisites for lifetime predictions. The understanding of individual governing factors also leads to a mechanistic interpretation of the observed SRC susceptibility C-curves. In conclusion, these results suggest that the criticality of residual stress evolution, but not the precipitation-induced local strains, be the leading factor for SRC.

347H stainless steel weldments↗
DOE OSTI2022

Alkene adsorption and cracking on acidic zeolites – A gradual process of understanding

Cracking of light alkenes on solid acids and, in particular on zeolites, is ubiquitous in refineries. Different zeolite framework topologies in the catalysts used provide spatial constraints for reactants and products, leading to discrete reaction routes and varying selectivities. The conversion of alkenes in cracking proceeds either via monomolecular or bimolecular reaction pathways. In both routes, the reacting alkene adsorbs first on Brønsted acid sites forming the initial state (e.g., π-complex, carbenium ion or alkoxide), followed by β-cleavage in the carbenium transition state, generating a smaller alkene and a carbenium ion (monomolecular route) or forming a dimer by alkene addition that cracks subsequently (bimolecular route). The current state of understanding alkene sorption and cracking is critically discussed in this paper and four questions are formulated that may be the central questions from our perspective in further developing new generations of catalysts and processes for alkene conversion.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2022

Comparison of cracking behavior of nanocrystalline Cu film on substrates of different plastic deformation mechanisms

Nanocrystalline (NC) metallic thin films on metal substrates usually undergo substantial cracking at applied strains of a few percent due to strain concentration at the film/substrate interfaces. In this work, we show that the cracking of a nanocrystalline Cu film can be significantly inhibited by a NiTi substrate. NC Cu films are deposited on 304 stainless steel, Kapton and NiTi substrates, in which plastic deformation occurs via dislocation slip, molecule chain disentanglement and collective lattice shear, respectively. NC Cu film on NiTi substrate starts to show observable cracks at an applied strain of 24%, in contrast to 6% for that on steel and 15% for that on Kapton. Further, the crack density in the film on NiTi substrate is two to three orders lower than the counterparts. The discrepancy is suggested to attribute to the reduced local strain concentration enabled by the uniform lattice shear and high strain hardening of the NiTi substrate.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

A study of Cell Cracks Formation During Freight Shipping : Monitoring Shock and Temperature in Real-Time & Assessing Damages With Pre and Post-Transit Characterizations of PV Modules

The solar photovoltaic (PV) industry often experiences module damage during transportation. PV modules stacked horizontally and strapped on wooden pallets may develop failures impacting their efficiency (glass shattering, cracks, frame indentation, etc.), especially when modules are not packed by professionals. The appearance of failures during the shipment from one laboratory to another can be detrimental to research studies. In this study, we tested a reusable plastic pallet designed to ship modules vertically. Five technologies of commercial PV modules were shipped together from Arizona to Florida including: glass/glass bifacial modules (framed and frameless), glass/transparent backsheet bifacial modules and glass/white backsheet modules (framed). Each module technology has a different physical size. Some modules had pre-existing cell-cracks allowing for the study of cell-crack formation and propagation during shipment. Dark current-voltage (I-V), light I-V and electroluminescence characterization were performed before and after shipment. A datalogger was used to monitor shocks and ambient temperature throughout the shipment and identify when the modules were more susceptible to damage. The modules were tilted upon receipt and the pallet were damaged but with no shattered modules. Time series shock data provided by the datalogger were used to determine potential responsible events. Our results reveal a few new post-transportation cracks for some modules. Modules parameters before and after shipment are also compared regarding the module constructions and their position in the pallet.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Cracked Gridline Wear Out Follows a Power Law

Cracks can form in Silicon solar cells in photovoltaic modules due to mechanical stresses arising from various extrinsic factors like handling and weather. While the immediate performance degradation may be minor, continuous loading overtime will degrade module performance. One probable reason is gridline surface wear across the cracked silicon with increased cyclic loading. In this work we propose a method to correlate gridline wear to module electrical degradation. We begin by conducting cyclic four-point bending tests on laminated silicon solar cells with a single crack and 22 intact gridlines for 10,000 cycles. We measure the progressive change in resistance during each loading cycle. We correlate it to a length scale called critical crack opening displacement (CCOD) that signifies failure of individual gridlines. By employing Weibull analysis, we determine the characteristic CCOD for all cycles and fit this data to a modified version of a wear power law. We observe that this i ts the data well. We also propose to study the effect of individual parameters in the power law equation and extend the equation to include material properties.

bending↗