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© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Stress relaxation cracking (SRC) is considered one of the major failure mechanisms for 347H stainless steel welds at elevated service temperatures or during post weld heat treatment (PWHT), especially within the heat-affected zone (HAZ). This work focuses on the characterization of SRC susceptibility within 347H physically simulated arc welded HAZ at elevated temperatures. A four-step SRC thermomechanical test in combination with finite element modeling (FEM) of the welding and testing processes is developed to establish a susceptibility map for HAZ. The test first runs a thermal cycle with three different peak temperatures (1335, 1275, and 1150 °C) to duplicate representative HAZ subzone microstructures, followed by time-to-failure examination under a variety of pre-stress (260–600 MPa) and pre-strain conditions (0.03–0.19) as a function of reheat temperatures between 750 and 1050 °C. With the aid of FEM, SRC susceptibility maps are generated to identify the threshold stress, plastic strain, and creep strain as a function of test temperature. It was found out that HAZ subzone with a lower peak temperature (1150 °C) appears to be slightly less susceptible to SRC than the other two subzones that experienced higher peak temperatures. Generally, time-to-fracture reduces with increasing initially applied stress and strain for all test temperatures. The pre-stress thresholds decrease from about 500 to 330 MPa as the testing temperature increases from 800 to 1050 °C, while the corresponding initial plastic strain thresholds reduces from 0.15 to 0.06. The SRC susceptibility was also evaluated through the Larson–Miller Parameter (LMP) analysis as a function of plastic strain, initial stress and starting stress upon reaching the testing temperature, respectively. The 1050 °C test with a high pre-applied strain (0.1) exhibits an extremely short time to failure (t = 3 s) that lies outside the general trend in LMP analysis. Additionally, it was identified that a plastic strain above 0.07 is identified to significantly reduce the bulk creep strain tolerance to fracture and therefore increases SRC susceptibility. Hardness measurement and fractography analysis indicated that the strain aging of niobium carbonitrides and other potential phases in conjunction with intergranular precipitates contributes to an increase in microhardness and increased intergranular cracking susceptibility.

Details

Title
Stress Relaxation Cracking in 347H Stainless Steel Arc Welds: Susceptibility Evaluation of Heat-Affected Zone
Author
Pickle, Timothy 1 ; Yu, Hong 1 ; Augustine, Chad 2 ; Vidal, Judith 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Yu, Zhenzhen 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 George S. Ansell Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401, USA; [email protected] (T.P.); [email protected] (Y.H.) 
 National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA; [email protected] (C.A.); [email protected] (J.V.) 
 George S. Ansell Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401, USA; [email protected] (T.P.); [email protected] (Y.H.); National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA; [email protected] (C.A.); [email protected] (J.V.) 
First page
494
Publication year
2024
Publication date
2024
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20754701
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3059574679
Copyright
© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.