Production of High-Strength and High-Toughness Steel for Offshore Structures

Abstract

By the utilization of new fine particles, steels refining the heat affected zone (HAZ) structure have been developed. This has made possible the mass-production of offshore structural steels which have high-strength of 460–500N/mm2 in yield strength (YS) and excellent crack-tip opening displacement (CTOD) properties. These newly developed steels for offshore structures have been mass-production to over 45,000 tons. The new particles are dispersed finely in the developed steels and show a strong pinning effect. The newly developed steels also use the intragranular ferrite (IGF) like titanium oxide bearing steel (TiO steel). In mass-production heats, γ grain size is restricted below 200 μm under conditions of 1400°C for 60 seconds. The improvement of HAZ toughness and the utilization of the thermo-mechanical control process (TMCP) has restrained the increase in carbon equivalent (Ceq,PCM) far as possible. By application of these technologies, it has been possible to mass-produce steels with high-strength, excellent CTOD properties and good weldability. As for steel plates of YS500N/mm2, the production of steel plates up to 70mm in thickness was carried out. The properties of welded joints for the 70mm-thick plates of YS500N/mm2 steel have been evaluated under heat input in 0.7kJ/mm of flux-cored are welding (FCAW) and 3.5kJ/mm of sub-merged arc welding (SAW). They have shown excellent CTOD and Charpy impact properties at welded joints; and have moreover indicated good weldability when PCM has been restricted to 0.22% or lower.