Study of Creep Strength for P91 Steels after Short Term Overheating above Ac<sub>3</sub> Temperature

Abstract

Advanced ferritic steels containing 9 wt% Cr are widely used in the construction of supercritical and ultra supercritical boiler components. The microstructure of the as supplied 91 materials consists of a tempered martensite matrix, a fine dispersion of intergranular chromium rich M23C6 precipitates and intragranular carbonitrides MX particles rich in V and Nb. This steel requires post weld heat treatment (PWHT) to produce a tempered microstructure after welding to develop excellent creep strength for high temperature service. Based on past experience, situations may arise whereby the components are subjected to an accidental overshoot in temperature during PWHT. The short excursion to high temperature beyond Ac3 would have resulted in the formation of deleterious phases, for example, soft α-ferrite which has poor creep strength and hard martensite which has a low toughness. In this study, the degraded specimens with soft α ferrite as a result of cooling transformation from 900°C are proven to have a limited creep rupture life where the creep rupture strength dropped remarkably after 1000 hours. As the peak temperature increased to 950°C and 1000°C, hard and brittle martensite was formed on cooling. The creep specimens were found to exhibit better creep strength; most probably the creep behavior was improved by the tempering effect at 600°C during creep tests. Nevertheless, despite the tempering which might have improved the toughness slightly, the high temperature creep rupture stress still had dropped approximately 40%, as compared to the virgin alloys in the range of rupture time from 1,000 hours to 10,000 hours.