The fabrication and design of hard magnetic materials for micro-electro-mechanical system applications by electrochemical deposition has to consider not only the intrinsic material properties but also the shape anisotropy of the micro-devices. Within the scope of the present work, an as-plated process for hard magnetic Co-based materials was developed, with the products intended to be used as magnetic scales in a positioning system with a resolution within the nanometer range. First, the process–material correlations are investigated in a laboratory-scale process. The CoP and CoNiP show a maximum coercivity of H_C = 28 and 45 kA/m, respectively, as well as maximum remanence polarizations of J_R = 0.65 and 0.40 T, respectively. The CoP process is transferred to a specially developed 20 L plating cell with paddle convection capabilities and a passive bezel to deposit 50 µm wide scales with different thicknesses of up to 55 µm in an integrated process. The in-plane magnetization of the scale bars shows higher remanence polarization than for the out-of-plane direction. Magnetic field-assisted electrochemical deposition promotes the vertical magnetization component resulting in a remanence polarization of 205 mT (out-of-plane) for a scale thickness of 25 µm.

AISI 347 austenitic steel is, as an example, used in nuclear energy piping systems. Piping filled with superheated steam or cooled water is particularly exposed to high stresses, whereupon local material properties in the pipes can change significantly, especially in the case of additional corrosive influences, leading to aging of the material. In the absence of appropriate information, such local material property variations are currently covered rather blanketly by safety factors set during the design of those components. An increase in qualified information could improve the assessment of the condition of such aged components. As part of the collaborative project “Microstructure-based assessment of the maximum service life of core materials and components subjected to corrosion and fatigue (MiBaLeB)”, the short-time procedure, StrainLife, was developed and validated by several fatigue tests. With this procedure, a complete S–N curve of a material can be determined on the basis of three fatigue tests only, which reduces the effort compared to a conventional approach significantly and is thus ideal for assessing the condition of aged material, where the material is often rare, and a cost-effective answer is often very needed. The procedure described is not just limited to traditional parameters, such as stress and strain, considered in destructive testing but rather extends into parameters derived from non-destructive testing, which may allow further insight into what may be happening within a material’s microstructure. To evaluate the non-destructive quantities measured within the StrainLife procedure and to correlate them with the aging process in a material, several fatigue tests were performed on unnotched and notched specimens under cyclic loading at room and elevated temperatures, as well as under various media conditions, such as distilled water and reactor pressure vessel boiling water (BWR) conditions.

The assessment of metallic materials used in power plants’ piping represents a big challenge due to the thermal transients and the environmental conditions to which they are exposed. At present, a lack of information related to degradation mechanisms in structures and materials is covered by safety factors in its design, and in some cases, the replacement of components is prescribed after a determined period of time without knowledge of the true degree of degradation. In the collaborative project “Microstructure-based assessment of maximum service life of nuclear materials and components exposed to corrosion and fatigue (MibaLeb)”, a methodology for the assessment of materials’ degradation is being developed, which combines the use of NDT techniques for materials characterization, an optimized fatigue lifetime analysis using short time evaluation procedures (STEPs) and numerical simulations. In this investigation, the AISI 347 (X6CrNiNb18-10) is being analyzed at different conditions in order to validate the methodology. Besides microstructural analysis, tensile and fatigue tests, all to characterize the material, a pressurized hot water pipe exposed to a series of flow conditions will be evaluated in terms of full-scale testing as well as prognostic evaluation, where the latter will be based on the materials’ data generated, which should prognose changes in the material’s condition, specifically in a pre-cracked stage. This paper provides an overview of the program, while the more material’s related aspects are presented in the subsequent paper.