b'tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding, inOur team relies heavily upon particular an accident tolerant fuelnanomechanical testing, especially cladding alloy FeCrAl C26M. Therewhen investigating ion irradiated have been a limited number of studiesspecimens, to study the changes to on FeCrAl welds, with the primarythe mechanical properties. The smaller mode of mechanical testing involvingvolume needed by these tests permits straining the entire weld region andgood sensitivity to the very shallow using digital image correlation todepths ions can penetrate. The weld extract stress state information in thestudy provided a good platform to weld [3]. Leveraging our mesoscalebenchmark the sensitivity of a variety test specimen sizes, we investigatedof nanomechanical tests, including the local properties of each weldnanoindentation, micropillar region (i.e., heat-affected zones,compression, and microshear testing. fusion zone) [4]. It was found that nanoindentation Initial mesoscale tensile testingwith a Berkovich tip, best reproduced reasonably reproduced bulk-likethe trends observed from mesoscale responses, suggesting that conventionaltensile testing.Taylor hardening models can be appliedReferences:to understanding the deformation[1] Q. McCulloch, J. Gigax, and P. behavior from the microstructure atHosemann, JOM 72 (2020) 1694.this length scale. The results of the[2] J. G. Gigax, H.Vo, Q. McCulloch, study showed a number of interestingM. Chancey, Y. Wang, S. A. Maloy, N. Li, observations, as shown in Figure 2.and P. Hosemann, Scripta Mater. 170 While the strengths showed some(2019) 145.variation in the weld regions, the uniform and total elongations differed[3] M. N. Gussev, K. G. Field, and Y. significantly in the plug-side heatYamamoto, Mater. Des. 129 (2017) 227.affected zone compared to the other[4] J. Gigax, A. Torrez, Q. McCulloch, regions. Coupled with the lowestH. Kim, N. Li, S. Maloy, J. Mater. Res. measured strength, these results(2020), doi: 10.1557/jmr.2020.195.indicated that failure would occur first in this region.2020|AFC ACCOMPLISHMENTS 77'