About

Arthur Motta is a professor of nuclear engineering in the Ken and Mary Alice Lindquist Department of Nuclear Engineering and in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Penn State. He holds degrees in mechanical engineering and nuclear engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining Penn State in 1992, he worked as a research associate for the CEA at the Centre for Nuclear Studies in Grenoble, France, and as a postdoctoral fellow for AECL at Chalk River Laboratories in Canada. His research focuses on mechanisms of materials degradation when exposed to the nuclear reactor environment, including radiation damage, microstructural evolution, corrosion, and hydriding, with the goal of better predicting materials behavior and developing new materials for nuclear applications.

Research topics

• Materials science
• Metallurgy
• Engineering
• Political Science
• Chemistry
• Chemical engineering
• Thermodynamics
• Physics
• Organic chemistry
• Composite material
• Meteorology
• Physical chemistry
• Art
• Nuclear engineering

Selected publications

• Cavity Evolution in Irradiated Alloy 800H Studied with in-situ Ion Irradiation

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Toward Developing Machine-Learning-Aided Tools for the Thermomechanical Monitoring of Nuclear Reactor Components

  ArXiv.org · 2025-07-13

  preprintOpen access

  Proactive maintenance strategies, such as Predictive Maintenance (PdM), play an important role in the operation of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs), particularly due to their capacity to reduce offline time by preventing unexpected shutdowns caused by component failures. In this work, we explore the use of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture combined with a computational thermomechanical model to calculate the temperature, stress, and strain of a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) fuel rod during operation. This estimation relies on a limited number of temperature measurements from the cladding's outer surface. This methodology can potentially aid in developing PdM tools for nuclear reactors by enabling real-time monitoring of such systems. The training, validation, and testing datasets were generated through coupled simulations involving BISON, a finite element-based nuclear fuel performance code, and the MOOSE Thermal-Hydraulics Module (MOOSE-THM). We conducted eleven simulations, varying the peak linear heat generation rates. Of these, eight were used for training, two for validation, and one for testing. The CNN was trained for over 1,000 epochs without signs of overfitting, achieving highly accurate temperature distribution predictions. These were then used in a thermomechanical model to determine the stress and strain distribution within the fuel rod.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Discerning the Effect of Various Irradiation Modes on the Corrosion of Zircaloy-4

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Toward development of a low-temperature failure envelope of cases for high-burnup RIAs under PWR operational conditions

  Nuclear Engineering and Design · 2024-10-31 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Discerning the effect of various irradiation modes on the corrosion of Zircaloy-4

  Journal of Nuclear Materials · 2024-11-08 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Modeling hydrogen localization in Zircaloy cladding subjected to temperature gradients

  Journal of Nuclear Materials · 2023-12-06 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mechanisms of Mesoscale Hydride Morphology and Reorientation in a Polycrystal Investigated Using Phase-Field Modeling

  2023-11-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter

  This study focuses on the precipitation of nanoscale hydrides in polycrystalline zirconium as a first step to predicting the hydride morphology observed experimentally and investigating the mechanisms responsible for hydride reorientation at the mesoscale. A quantitative phase-field model, which includes the elastic anisotropy of the nanoscale zirconium hydride system, is developed to investigate the mechanism of hydride reorientation in which the presence of an applied hoop stress promotes hydride precipitation in grains with basal poles aligned with the circumferential direction. Although still elongated along the basal plane of the hexagonal matrix, nanoscale hydrides growing in grains oriented perpendicular to the applied stress appear radial at the mesoscale. Thus, a preferential hydride precipitation in grains with basal poles aligned parallel to the applied stress could account for mesoscale hydride reorientation. This mechanism is consistent with experimental observations performed in other studies.

  PublisherDOI

• Automated analysis of grain morphology in TEM images using convolutional neural network with CHAC algorithm

  Journal of Nuclear Materials · 2023-11-03 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• In-situ irradiation-induced studies of grain growth kinetics of nanocrystalline UO2

  Acta Materialia · 2022-03-22 · 19 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Ion irradiation induced amorphization of precipitates in Zircaloy

  Journal of Nuclear Materials · 2022-08-20 · 15 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Materials World Network: Kinetics of Hydride Precipitation near a Crack Tip in Zirconium

  NSF · $300k · 2007–2011

Frequent coauthors

• C. Lemaignan

  24 shared

• Robert J. Comstock

  20 shared

• D. A. Koss

  Pennsylvania State University

  20 shared

• R. C. Birtcher

  17 shared

• Kimberly Colas

  CEA Paris-Saclay

  16 shared

• P.R. Okamoto

  14 shared

• Zhonghou Cai

  Argonne National Laboratory

  14 shared

• L. M. Howe

  Atomic Energy (Canada)

  14 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Nuclear Engineering

  University of California, Berkeley

  1985

• M.S., Nuclear Engineering

  University of California, Berkeley

  1981

• B.S., Nuclear Engineering

  University of California, Berkeley

  1979

Awards & honors

• Early Career Award