Component behaviour in the 700 C power plant. Numerical and experimental investigations

Currently martensitic steels are used in fossil fired power plants with maximum working temperatures up to 625 C. These steels do not show the required creep rupture strength at the target temperature of 700 C. For these high temperatures, new materials like the nickel base alloys have to be qualified for power plants services. Originating from the weld of turbine materials, nickel base alloys show outstanding creep rupture strength. An alloy with good prospects out of the material class of the nickel base alloys is Alloy 617 mod. However, this material is expensive due to its high nickel content. Furthermore, the complex machinability of this material leads to an additional increase in expenses. A complete fabrication of the boiler area using Alloy 617 mod is not economically feasible, which means that the usage of this material has to be limited to the temperature weld of 625 C to 700 C. For the boiler area with temperatures below 625 C the well proven 9 % to 12 % Cr-steels, like T/P92 and VM12/VM12-SHC may be used. In the weld of low temperatures up to 525 C the usage of the 2.5 % Cr-steel T/P24 offers numerous advantages, in particular in the fabrication of membrane walls. This material shows good creep properties up to temperatures of 525 C and, for thin walled components, T24 can be welded without post weld heat treatment by using suitable techniques. For a successful design and fabrication of a 700 C fossil fired power plant, appropriate materials have to be qualified. Here, a special focus is set on the creep properties of these materials. The presented work is a significant contribution to the qualification of these materials. First, the materials Alloy 617 mod, T/P92, VM12/VM12-SHC and T24 are briefly introduced and characterized. After this, the materials are investigated in a detailed creep testing program. This program includes investigations on base material, extracted from tubes, pipes and inductive bends of pipes. In addition, crossweld specimens and specimens made of weld material are creep tested at high temperatures. To gain important information about the behavior under service conditions and multiaxial loadings, a test rig was developed at MPA Universitaet Stuttgart, which is able to test membrane-wall like components under this point of view. The applied mechanical and thermal loads in these tests are dimensioned to cause a status of high damage within the investigated materials after a test time of 2.000 h to 5.000 h. After the test procedure, the membrane-wall like specimens are metallographically investigated. The objectives of these investigations are the characterization of the actual damage within the material caused by the prior testing, in particular within the tube-fin-welds and furthermore to identify the area of crack formation. Besides the characterization and qualification of the materials for the construction of components of a high temperature fossil fired power plant with a peak temperature of 700 C the results of the uniaxial creep test will be used to develop material models for inelastic finite element simulations. For this a creep equation based on a formulation of Graham and Walles will be modified and furthermore extended with a damage parameter. By simulating the component tests presented in this work, the created material models (including three heat affected zones) could be verified. However, it becomes obvious that irregulations in geometry in a tube-fin-weld of a waterwall may exist and may lead to an additional bending load. By evaluating the damage parameter, which is implemented in the used creep equation, the local creep strains and the multiaxiality of the stress state, the area of maximum creep damage and with this the location of crack formation can be precisely predicted in the heat affected zone on the tube side, close to the surface of the tube-fin-weld. The acquired results show, that modern FE codes in combination with suitable creep equations are a powerful tool to support the design process of power plant components. Finally, the results in this work allow the conclusion that with the help of the introduced modified creep equation of Graham and Walles a numerical simulation of high temperature loaded boiler components is possible. Furthermore the data base for design and dimensioning processes of power plant components in the creep regime was extended with reliable data. In addition to that the qualification of the materials Alloy 617 mod, T/P92, VM12/VM12-SHC and T24 for the usage in fossil fired power plants with temperatures up to 700 C was furthered.