Significant reduction in creep life of P91 steam pipe elbow caused by an aberrant microstructure after short-term service

P91 steel is an important steam pipe for ultra-supercritical power plants due to its excellent creep strength, which generally has a design life of 100,000 h. Here, we found a significant aberrant decrease in the creep rupture life of a main steam pipe elbow after only 20,000 h of service. The micro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2024-03, Vol.14 (1), p.5216-5216, Article 5216
Main Authors: Zhou, Hongyu, Li, Jian, Liu, Jie, Yu, Peichen, Liu, Xinyang, Fan, Zhiyang, Hu, Anqing, He, Yinsheng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/166/4073
639/301/1023
Coal-fired power plants
Decomposition
Elbow
Grain boundaries
Humanities and Social Sciences
Industrial plant emissions
Microstructure
multidisciplinary
Power plants
Rupture
Scanning electron microscopy
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Steam
Steel
Temperature
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Summary:P91 steel is an important steam pipe for ultra-supercritical power plants due to its excellent creep strength, which generally has a design life of 100,000 h. Here, we found a significant aberrant decrease in the creep rupture life of a main steam pipe elbow after only 20,000 h of service. The microstructure in the aberrant piece exhibited a decomposition of martensitic lath into blocky ferrite due to recrystallization and accumulation of M 23 C 6 as well as formation of the Laves phase along the prior austenitic grain boundaries, resulting in the decrease of hardness that no long meet ASME standard requirement. The creep testing of the P91 piece at 550–600 °C and 85–140 MPa shows that the influence of temperature on the cavity formation and cracking is greater than that of the applied stress. The rupture life is nearly two orders of magnitude shorter than the normal P91, attributing to the creep damage of the subgrain growth, M 23 C 6 and Laves phase coarsening (aggregation approaching 3.4 μm). The residual life of the aberrant piece was evaluated to be 53,353 h based on the Larson–Miller parameter, which is much shorter than the design life, suggesting the safety operation of the elbow area should be paid more attention during the afterward service periods. P91 steel, main steam pipe elbow, aberrant microstructure, service degradation, creep life prediction
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-024-55557-w