Assessment of the Mechanical Properties of Ultra-High Purity Niobium after Cold Work and Heat Treatment with the HL-LHC Crab Cavities as Benchmark

The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) is the upgrade of the world’s largest particle collider; it will allow the full exploitation of the LHC potential and its operation beyond 2025. An essential part of the HL-LHC project are the Crab Cavities, that are particle de-flecting SRF cavities of non-axisymmetric shape made of bulk ultra-high purity Nb. Since the cavities are produced by complex metal sheet forming processes, followed by a heat treatment (HT) for H outgassing (650 °C, 24 h), there is uncertainty on their mechanical properties after manu-facturing and in service conditions (2 K). Mechanical tests at room temperature have been conducted on RRR300 pure Nb samples. The samples were previously submitted, by cold cross-rolling, to different levels of plastic deformation representative of the effective plastic strain seen by the Nb sheets during forming operations. Moreover, a comparison of the mechanical properties of cold cross-rolled samples before and after HT has been established. Results of evolution of the microstructure and hardness are also presented. This study can be of interest for Nb cavities to be submitted to HT at 650 °C, and may help to push the design of novel SRF cavities.