Effects of grain size and porosity on strength of Li2TiO3 tritium breeding pebbles and its grain growth behavior

Tons of Li2TiO3 tritium breeding pebbles will be filled in the blanket for obtaining tritium fuel. In this work, isothermal sintering was carried out to study the grain growth behavior of the Li2TiO3 pebbles fabricated by agarose method. The grain growth exponent (n) and the activation energy (Q) calculated by the phenomenological kinetic equation were 2 and 435.65 kJ/mol, respectively. The grain growth was controlled by vapor transport (p = 2S/r). In addition, effects of porosity and grain-size on the strength of Li2TiO3 pebbles were investigated. The strength was affected by the grain size and the porosity of Li2TiO3 pebbles, and high strength (about 72 MPa) depended partly on achieving the optimum balance between the porosity (about 10%) and grain size (about 2 mm). (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.