Multi-scale modeling of self-irradiation effects in plutonium alloys - Molecular dynamic simulations results

Abstract

AbstractThe plutonium α decay leads to the formation of numerous point defects in the metal structure. The multi-scale modeling of self-irradiation effects in plutonium alloys needs a quantitative knowledge of defects population properties. In this work, we initiated a parametric study of molecular dynamics displacement cascade simulations to get properties of defects microstructure such as number of point defects, number and size of clusters, spatial repartition and spatial expansion of the cascade. These data constitute some of the input parameters for the mesoscopic scale simulations. First results obtained for two 2 keV energy cascades simulations are presented and discussed.