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Remaining life assessment issues in high Cr martensitic steels and development of new innovative tools for damage monitoring and integrity assessment

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Abstract

The relatively newer high Cr martensitic steels such as P91 have now been in use in power industry for over twenty years. Over this time, there have been a number of incidents of cracking and failure in components made from P91 steel, both in thick and thin section equipments mainly due to creep damage. The thick section components have been usually failing due to Type IV cracking associated with the weldments while thin section components have been failing due to higher than expected levels of steam oxidation resulting in enhanced metal loss, increase in metal temperature above design, creep cavitation and cracking. However, it has not been possible to detect early stage creep damage/cavitation in high Cr martensitic steels using conventional replication type methods. This is because unlike the low alloy CrMoV steels, spherodisation of microstructure does not occur in high Cr martensitic steels and cavitation clearly visible by traditional methods only appears later in life when the material is about to fail. Thus there has been a need to develop new tools and more sensitive methods for integrity and damage assessment in these steels. European Technology Development (ETD) together with its industrial collaborators from Europe, Japan and North America have been looking at the development of tools and methodologies for early stage damage detection and life prediction as a part of its international multi-client project ‘P91 Integrity’. The tools which have shown successful results are portable Scanning Force Microscopy, laser guided hardness tester and more innovative use of ultrasonic probes for detecting early stage creep damage. This paper discusses the issues involved and describes some of the developments in this project.

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  1. European Technology Development, Surrey, UK

    A. Shibli

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  1. A. Shibli
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Shibli, A. Remaining life assessment issues in high Cr martensitic steels and development of new innovative tools for damage monitoring and integrity assessment. Trans Indian Inst Met 63, 339–348 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12666-010-0045-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12666-010-0045-6

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