Effect of PKA energy distribution and electronic stopping power on collision cascade damage evolution; A computational study

Understanding how microstructure evolves under accumulated irradiation damage is crucial for the development of materials for future nuclear power plants. Molecular dynamics simulations have previously been successfully used to study the build-up of defects, usually with constant recoil energies. We investigate how the damage evolution from consecutive fixed energy cascades compares to the cumulative damage from randomly sampled PKA energies in BCC tungsten and iron. Additionally, we study how the damage evolution is affected by exclusion and inclusion of electronic stopping power. We find that varying the average PKA energy affects the damage evolution, while the random and fixed energy cascades yield comparable results. Moreover, we find that the damage evolution is significantly affected by how electronic stopping is implemented.