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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the thermal embrittlement and the mechanical properties of 2.25Cr 1Mo steel aged
at high temperature for extended periods. Original and aged materials were tested to obtam the tensile strength, hardness and
impact-absorbed energy. The tensile strength, hardness and impact-absorbed energy decreased as aging time was increased. X-ray
dirtraction was used to study changes in carbide structure. These changes lead to thermal embrittlement. 2001 Elsevier Science
B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Carbide extract; Energy transition temperature; Fatigue test; High temperature tensile test; Thermal embrittlement
1. Introduction
Structural steel components should have good toughness even after being subjected to elevated temperatures
for extended periods, a process that can cause temper
embrifflement. However, material degradation such as
thermal embrittlement occurs during prolonged service
at the working temperature range of steel power plant
steam pipes. Previous research on thermal embrittlement has addressed the following subjects:
1. the embrittlement mechanism and fracture morphology [1,2],
2. heat treatment for preventing brittle fractures,
3. the effect of microelements on degradation [35],
4. the correlation between impact energy and fracture
toughness [6 9].
The embrifflement mechanism has not been clearly
examined until recently. Now the embrittlement due to
grain-boundary carbide precipitation and the equivalent segregation can be exammed with the advent of
better analytical equipment.
This study was conducted to examine changes in the
strength of 2.25Cr 1Mo steel caused by high-temperature aging and to determine the characteristics of the
* Corresponding author. Tel.: + 82-53-8102456; fax: +82-538133703.
E-mail address: stkim@yu.ac.kr (H. Yang).
2. Experimental procedure
The steel used in the experiments was 2.25Cr 1Mo
steel. The mechanical properties and chemical composition of 2.25Cr 1Mo steel are listed elsewhere [1,2]. The
test specimens for investigating the degree of thermal
embrittlement were made from artificially aged and
in-service-aged materials. The artificially aged specimens were annealed for 500, 1000, and 5000 h at
530 C. The in-service-aged materials came from the
elbow tube of a steel pipe, which had been used for
about 10 000 h at 530 C. These specimens were cut as
shown in Fig. 1.
All specimens were tested to obtain the impact-absorbed energy, high-temperature tensile strength, and
hardness. The effect of fatigue crack growth with increasing aging time was also investigated. After each
test, the specimen was examined to compare the morphology of the carbides. For this, the carbide particles
were extracted by electrolytic dissolution.
Concerning the tensile test at the elevated temperature, tests were periormed up to 600 C at intervals of
100 C and the tensile strength was measured at each
0921-5093/01/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 1 - 5 0 9 3 ( 0 1 ) 0 1 0 0 8 - 5
317
T T0
C
(1)
Fig. 1. Schematic for the location of the tensile and impact test
specimens.
3. Experimental results
318
Fig. 4 shows CVN impact test results and approximate curves for materials artificially aged at the different aging times. Fig. 5 shows the approximate absorbed
energy transition temperature obtained from the data in
Fig. 4. The energy transition temperature can be represented by the following equation, which was obtained
by curve fitting the data in Fig. 5.
T0 = 37+0.1027 t 0.574
(2)
rates of the original and aged specimens, but a somewhat different growth rate is observed in the used
material. In spite of the fact that the morphology and
distribution of the carbides changes with aging time,
the behavior of the carbide does not show any change
during the fatigue cycling. This means that the behavior
of the carbide is not relevant to fatigue cycling.
The carbide precipitation obtained by bulk electrolytic extraction was analyzed by X-ray diffraction, as
shown in Fig. 7. M23C6, M2C and M3C were found
both in the original and aged specimens. With increasing aging time, the amount of M23C6 increased. For the
material used for a long time at high temperature, the
X-ray analysis showed different types and quantities of
carbides. In particular, the amount of M7C3 increased
with increasing aging time. Generally the behavior of
carbides for the 2.25Cr1Mo steel used at high temperatures for a long period evolved with time as follows
[11]:
e-Carbide
+
M3C
M3C
M3C
+
M2C
M7C3
.
M23C6 M6C
4. Conclusions
The purpose of this study was to investigate the
thermal embrittlement and the mechanical properties of
2.25Cr1Mo steel after different aging conditions. The
results are summarized as follows.
319
Fig. 8. Microstructure of 2.25Cr 1Mo steel, (a) original (b) used material.
Fig. 9. Microstructures of used 2.25Cr 1Mo steel tube, (a) axial cross section, (b) diagonal cross section, (c) outside surface, and (d) inside surface.
320
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