Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Wiest, Stephen P..
This report presents the work performed for welding 17-7PH stainless steel hemispheres, flanges, and accelerometer blocks. This includes weld development, microhardness measurements, calculated strengths, and distortion measurements after welding and heat treatment. The results of this report are utilized to propose a recommended welding procedure which was implemented for this experiment.
This report presents the status of an effort to investigate welding and joining techniques for microreactor monolith structural materials. Previously reported results have demonstrated the potential to tier weld sub-scale components using electron beam welding. Tier welding has been investigated on larger scale test articles, and results indicate that tier welding is not feasible for larger components due to the penetration depth that is required. Additional techniques to produce full length parts have been examined, including diffusion bonding and gundrilling. Evaluations of these techniques are ongoing, and have shown early success on sub-scale components. These results indicate that while issues still exist for manufacturing microreactor structures, these challenges are better understood and solutions are in development.