Mechanical performance degradation of glass fiber insulation material after neutron irradiation

Epoxy based glass fiber reinforced plastic composites G-10 CR grade are suitable material for electrical insulation breaks of the superconducting fusion device. At IPR, under the national fusion program, characterization of G-10 CR material with the neutron irradiation dose is studied. This study will help us towards the indigenous development project of electrical insulation breaks for future superconducting fusion magnets under the radiation environment. The insulation material has been irradiated by 14 MeV neutrons D-T generator in the Fusion Neutronics Laboratory, I.P.R. The mechanical and electrical performance was investigated after irradiation (with a fluence of 8.63×10¹⁴ n/m²) at room and cryogenic temperature condition. The results show that the mechanical degradations (by ∼ 9 to 30%) after neutron irradiation in tensile strength and impact strength at 300 K and 77 K. In this paper, we present the experimental details of the neutron irradiation and the data have been compared using MCNP code for flux calculation on glass fiber insulation composite along with Stycast 2850 GT epoxy. Investigation of mechanical, electrical, SEM analysis for internal surface morphology, glass transition temperature measurement of insulation material and its test results at 300 K and 77 K before and after neutron irradiation will be presented.