ABSTRACT
Small or miniaturized specimens could be fit in the available space in nuclear reactors and also could be extracted from an irradiated component and handled with much reduced radiological hazard for examination. This chapter is devoted to small specimen test methods for determination of tensile and associative flow curve properties and focuses on the developments in subsize tensile and other novel test methods such as shear punch, small punch, and ball indentation. It deals with nonconventional test techniques for probing the plastic flow behavior of materials. In subsize tensile testing, many variants of the regular sample designs explored, especially with one or more dimensions of the specimen reduced below 0.5 mm. Ring tensile specimen geometry is a common design for characterizing the deformation behavior of thin-walled tubular components in the transverse direction. Grips for holding the specimens also need to be miniaturized and customized, consistent with the specimen dimensions.
