Research on corrosion resistance for zirconium-based alloys

The corrosion resistance of zirconium-based alloys plates obtained by different intermediate annealing processing was investigated. Corrosion tests under different condition in static autoclave indicate that low temperature annealing combination is beneficial to improve corrosion resistance for both two alloys (NZ2, NZ8) investigated and the two alloys have superior corrosion resistance to zircaloy-4 in out of pile tests. Further study carried out by means of TEM shows that the fine, dispersed, evenly distributed precipitates in recrystallized α-Zr can be obtained by low temperature processing, this is just the reason for the superior corrosion resistance of plates subjecting to low intermediate annealing combination processing.