The standard practice recommended for high pressure vessels, having heavy walls, requires the implementation of weld joint preparation with narrow gap technique; this generally calls for a ‘two beads per layer’ sequence alongside the use of the submerged arc welding process. This process provides a high quality and uniformed weld joint whilst also reducing the residual stresses after welding. In refinery equipment that are subjected to high pressures and are exposed to hydrogen environment, high strength materials such as 2 1/4 Cr 1 Mo 1/4 V are commonly used. A recent study conducted on this material, and the process of submerged arc welding with narrow gap technique ‘two beads per layer,’ had identified a potential issue in complying with ASME Code specified creep resistance properties. In another setting, with regards to the properties of toughness in weld joints, other possible inconsistencies, in the narrow gap weld joint, between the weld centerline and center bead, were found. In order to overcome the deficiencies stated above, an innovative welding technology is presented in this paper which is based on the preparation of a narrower groove than the commonly used narrow gap technique. Such groove has been designed to implement the ‘single bead per layer’ approach. This paper illustrates that the use of this new technique results in improved quality of weld seams as applied in heavy wall high pressure vessels used in creep regime. The welding process considered is that of tandem submerged arc welding with two wires. The mechanical characteristics and results obtained by comparing the two techniques ‘two beads per layer’, and the new innovative one ‘single bead per layer’ will be evidenced and discussed.

Vanadium modified 2 1/4Cr-1Mo and 3Cr-1Mo alloys used for the fabrication of hydroprocessing reactors offer a number of important advantages over the corresponding conventional alloys. These include increased resistance to hydrogen attack, a lower susceptibility to temper embrittlement, increased resistance to weld overlay disbonding and higher strength resulting in thinner and lighter reactors. Since the first vanadium modified 3Cr-1Mo reactors first went into service in the early 1990’s, vanadium modified alloys have gained acceptance and today more than one hundred and forty vanadium modified reactors and pressure vessels have been placed in service and are operating in severe process environments. Despite the excellent benefits of these materials, they also exhibit less desirable characteristics such as reduced weldability, higher hardnesses in the base metal, weld metal and heat affected zones and the need for higher post weld heat treatment (PWHT) temperatures. Additionally, these materials have a reduced notch toughness at lower temperatures especially in the as welded condition and require intermediate stress relieving (ISR) in lieu of dehydrogenation treatment (DHT) in restrained and highly stressed joints such as nozzle to shell and head welds. These materials also require extra care and effort to be taken during fabrication. The paper presents a serious weld metal cracking problem that occurred with vanadium modified materials during the installation of a nozzle in a restrained and highly stressed weld when only DHT was performed instead of the more beneficial ISR. This fabrication problem is provided as a typical example of problems that can occur during fabrication with vanadium modified materials, and points out that additional care must be taken during fabrication when using these materials. The paper identifies the main causes for the cracking using information based upon mechanical, metallurgical and stress analyses and suggests steps that may be taken to circumvent similar reoccurrences.

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Refinery equipment subjected to high pressure is commonly made of Vanadium high strength steels (2¼Cr1Mo¼V), characterized by high allowable stress and low toughness in the as welded condition, leading to potential wall cracking before the application of thermal treatments. Therefore, the decision to perform specific thermal treatments after welding is of paramount importance. These thermal treatments, which are quite expensive and time demanding for the manufacturer, are still under discussion and not supported by evident scientific findings. The paper presents a numerical and experimental study on a plate-to-plate weld and on a nozzle-to-plate weld, created as ad-hoc mock-ups. Experimental residual stresses are collected by an X-ray diffractometer in the as welded configurations. These values are used to validate a complex 3D numerical model, implemented with the finite element software Abaqus and its AWI plugin. Finally, this validated model allows for the identification of joint criticality through two parameters: the volume of plasticized material per unit of welded length and the strain-based assessment according with ASME code. Their application as tools to compare the criticality of different welded geometries and the effect of thermal treatments on the residual stress field are discussed.

Components that are subject to pressure, typical of the pressure vessel industry, can be designed using such calculation methods as “Design by Rule-DBF” or “Design by Analysis-DBA”. DBA, based on the FEM, is used increasingly often because, in addition to providing a reduction in thickness due to the lower uncertainty on the calculation, it helps to verify and study physical phenomena and complex geometry that are otherwise difficult to research while offering a more intuitive usability of the results. In this paper we wish to offer, in an educative and qualitative manner, a general overview of DBA from the creation of the model to obtaining the results, describing the types of analysis that can be carried out according to the constitutive model of the material used and the degree of accuracy that can be achieved. At the end, we cover some case studies in which DBA has been successfully used to verify design or particular conditions (such as heat treatments) for pressure vessels fabrication. The DBA calculation, described in this paper, is used with the same computational methods for high, medium or low pressure components, but it is clear that the most significant reduction in thickness is for high pressure components such as reactors, which is why the DBA calculation is particularly appreciated for this type of equipment. In the context of this paper “high pressure equipment” means when the ratio of the inner diameter to thickness of the walls is < 30.