A Review on Steels for Cryogenic Applications

Abstract

Cryogenic systems have played a crucial role in almost all of the finest technological achievements of mankind. Cryogenic applications demand materials with a unique combination of properties, which drastically limits the choice of materials. In most other engineering applications, because of wide tailorability of their properties and excellent combination of strength and toughness, coupled with lower cost compared with nonferrous materials, steels have become the preferred/dominant structural material for cryogenic applications. The contradictory requirement of higher strength without compromising toughness at cryogenic temperatures posed considerable challenges and led to the development of large array of steels tailored for specific applications. This review is an attempt to survey the metallurgical aspects, material selection, mechanical property evaluation, and application of various standard and nonstandard steels for cryogenic applications. This review covers the influence of low temperatures on material properties, simulative mechanical tests for property evaluation, metallurgy of steels, and application examples surveying the published literature to date. The review also analyzes the origins of low-temperature toughness, various application requirements, and the work carried out at authors’ laboratories. The issues pertaining to mechanical tests at low temperatures and status of data generation in international scenario have been critically analyzed. Physical metallurgy aspects have been highlighted in the review, and microstructure-property-processing correlations for various steels have also been covered. One of the recent advances in steels for cryogenic applications, high-entropy alloys, which are proposed as alternatives for the conventional steels, have been reviewed, and mechanical property data have been critically analyzed. The potential of additive manufactured steels for low-temperature applications has been reviewed. Finally, this review article discusses challenges in processing–mechanical properties correlation for various grades of steels for cryogenic applications. It also provides useful information for researchers working on steels for cryogenic applications with a glimpse of recent advances made in this area.

Atomic faulting induced exceptional cryogenic strain hardening in gradient cell–structured alloy

“…( E ) Strength and ductility synergy of GDS alloy, compared with other high-performing materials at cryogenic temperature. Uniform elongation versus ultimate tensile strength normalized by Young’s modulus of the GDS alloy, compared with those of the same compositions (with homogeneous, gradient-grained structures) at 293 K and 77 K ( 34 – 36 ), other MPE alloys ( 37 – 42 ), and cryogenic steels ( 21 , 43 , 44 ) tensioned from 4.2 K to 77 K in the literature. The hollow five-pointed star denotes the property of the topmost GDS surface with the use of the strength value estimated from the H v/3 and uniform elongation data from tensile test of GDS layer.…”

“…To demonstrate the excellent strength-strain hardening synergy of GDS samples at 77 K, we compare their uniform elongation versus ultimate tensile strength (Fig. 2E) with those of the same compositions with homogeneous and gradient-grained structures at 293 K and 77 K ( 34 – 36 ) and with other MPE alloy systems ( 37 – 42 ) as well as the advanced cryogenic steels ( 21 , 43 , 44 ) at 4.2 K to 77 K, which correspond to various strengthening strategies. We normalized the strength by the Young’s modulus of the material.…”

“…When strain hardening is improved in this manner, deformation twinning and phase transformation may act as secondary carriers of crystal plasticity at low temperature (17)(18)(19)(20). This scenario is particularly important for traditional single-principal element alloys with low stacking fault energies (SFEs) (1,11,21) and more recently developed high-to medium-entropy or multi-principal element (MPE) alloy systems (22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30). The presence of dynamic interactions between newly formed interfaces and dislocations contributes to a reasonable strain hardening capac-ity within a certain strain range.…”

Desain dan Analisis Tanki ISO LNG Kapasitas 40 feet Menggunakan Teknik Finite Element Analysis

“…Material yang biasanya bersifat duktil pada temperatur atmosfer dapat menjadi sangat getas ketika dikondisikan pada temperatur yang sangat rendah, sementara material cryogenic keuletannya lebih meningkat. Beberapa jenis material yang biasa digunakan pada temperatur cryogenic adalah baja stainless steel (SS) 316L (Sas, Weiss dan Jung, 2015), SS 304L (Gupta, 2017), baja 9% Nikel (Hany dkk., 2014), baja Invar (Anoop dkk., 2021), dan aluminium AL 5052 (Gang, Lee dan Nam, 2009).…”

Effect of Austenite Reversion and Its Stability on the Tensile and Impact Transition Behavior of High‐Strength Naval Steel

“…[2,[9][10][11][12][13] Ni increases the low-temperature toughness of steel not only by enhancing the intrinsic fracture resistance of tempered martensite matrix but also by stabilizing the austenite phase. [10,14,15] Both the thermal and mechanical stability of austenite (γ), retained in a tempered martensite matrix (α), are equally important to ensure good impact toughness, particularly for low-temperature applications. Notably, the austenite stability depends on the tempering (or, annealing) treatment within the (γ þ α) intercritical region.…”