Contribution to the assessment of thermal ageing of stainless steel castings and welds

Indentation tests are considered for measuring and verifying of thermal ageing of stainless steel castings and welds in service. Therefore, relations between indentation- and tensile diagrams were analyzed. Conventional tensile characteristics, deduced from the indentation diagram, should be used for fracture toughness prediction. Form of correlation of yield stress and tensile strength on one side and of fracture toughness on the other side was proposed, which is specific for austenitic-ferritic two-phase materials. Properties of castings and welds were compared and analyzed within the framework of a mesomechanical homogenization model with micromechanical effect of geometric slip distance. (author)