Abstract
Tube/Pipe (TP) 304 stainless steel has been widely used in industry, but a change in its microstructures may endanger its service safety, and it is essential to evaluate its microstructural evolution. In this work, a pulse-echo nonlinear method is proposed to characterize the microstructural evolution of the TP304 stainless steel. The detailed pulse-echo nonlinear experimental process is presented, and it is shown that the absolute nonlinear parameter can be determined when the effect of attenuation is taken into account. The microstructural evolution of TP304 stainless steel is artificially controlled by annealing treatments before it is evaluated by using nonlinear ultrasonic method and metallographic method. The results show that the grain sizes increase as the annealing time increases, which leads to the performance degradation of the TP304 steel and an increase in the nonlinear parameters, with the reason discussed considering the variation in the microstructure. The present pulse-echo nonlinear method is easier to conduct than the traditional transmission-through method and the absolute nonlinear parameter can be determined for quantitative characterization. The variation in determined nonlinear parameters provides a reference to evaluate the microstructural evolution of TP304 stainless steel.
Highlights
Tube/Pipe (TP) 304 stainless steel has numerous advantages including high corrosion resistance, good plasticity, high formability, and high temperature resistance, and has been widely used in ships, the nuclear industry, and pipelines of petrochemical plants [1,2,3]
Nonlinear ultrasonic techniques have been considered a potential tool for the assessment of the microstructural evolution and mechanical properties of materials, and it is shown that the nonlinear acoustic parameter is sensitive to the changes of grain sizes, Materials 2020, 13, 1395; doi:10.3390/ma13061395
We develop a pulse-echo nonlinear method to evaluate the microstructural evolution of the TP304 stainless steel
Summary
Tube/Pipe (TP) 304 stainless steel has numerous advantages including high corrosion resistance, good plasticity, high formability, and high temperature resistance, and has been widely used in ships, the nuclear industry, and pipelines of petrochemical plants [1,2,3]. The nonlinear ultrasonic method often measures these harmonic waves to obtain the relative or absolute nonlinear parameter to evaluate the microstructural evolution of materials. The pulse-echo method, which enables single-side access to the test component using a nonlinear longitudinal wave, provides a useful tool for practical applications of nonlinear ultrasonic measurement. We develop a pulse-echo nonlinear method to evaluate the microstructural evolution of the TP304 stainless steel. The process of measurement using pulse-echo method will be described in detail, and the electrical impedance mismatch problem [13,14] is solved in this work This method is introduced to determine nonlinear parameters of annealed specimens. The relationship between the nonlinear parameters and microstructural evolution of materials is developed, and the potential applications using the pulse-echo nonlinear method are discussed
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