Crack growth behaviour of P91 steel under trapezoidal loading at high temperature

Abstract

The increased incentives to utilize renewable energy sources so as to supplement the energy requirements of the present civilization pose a challenge to the power plants running on fossil fuels, as they are required to operate in a ‘flexible’ manner instead of operating at a constant load as intended during their design and inception. This flexible mode of operation at elevated temperature causes a combined creep and fatigue type of loads to be applied on the components. This allows for a comprehensive and effective understanding of synergistic creep-fatigue crack growth behaviour to assess long term failure of components and accessories in plant. The use of P91 steel has been widely prevalent in power plant components owing to its high creep resistance, superior mechanical properties and excellent thermal conductivity, cost-effectiveness, and minimal coefficient of thermal expansion when compared to austenitic steels and Ni-based alloys. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) has proposed a standard for experimentally evaluating creep-fatigue crack growth, E 2760-19, wherein compact specimens, C(T) are tested under load-controlled conditions. The creep-fatigue crack growth regime and mode of fracture undergone by P91 steel at 600 °C were studied using C(T) specimens at two different force ratio 0.1 and 0.5 and with two different hold time 10 and 600 sec. The Creep fatigue crack growth behaviour has been characterized using stress intensity factor range parameter ∆K and (Ct)avg parameter to study the effect of hold time and force ratio.