Brittle Fracture of Stainless Steel Dissimilar Metal Welds in the Upper Shelf of the Brittle-to-Ductile Transition Range

Abstract

Stainless steel dissimilar metal welds (SS DMW) are widely used within the French nuclear power plants where they connect the main components (pressure vessel, pressurizer, steam generator) made of low alloy ferritic steel to the primary circuit pipes made of austenitic stainless steel. Because of their heterogeneous microstructure and mechanical properties, these junctions are critical components for the structure integrity and their fracture resistance has to be demonstrated for all the nominal or accidental operating conditions. This work aims at building a model to evaluate the risk of brittle fracture of the SS DMW in the upper shelf of the brittle-to ductile transition range. The observation of the microstructures around the fusion line revealed a martensitic layer and a fully austenitic zone, which undergo an important carbides precipitation during the post-weld heat treatment and form a narrow hard layer of carburized martensite and austenite. Fracture toughness tests were then carried out on CT specimens in the brittle-to-ductile temperature range and helped identify the MA interface (between martensite and austenite) as the weakest region in the SS DMW because of an intergranular fracture mechanism initiated at the carbides-rich interface. This mechanism was consistently observed for specimens with fatigue precrack fronts in the hard layer. To model the brittle behavior of the MA interface, the stress distributions on the MA interface were calculated with FE numerical simulation of the fracture toughness tests and a 1D 3 parameters Weibull model based on a threshold stress and a threshold length was identified for the CT specimens. The temperature dependence of the model parameters was finally studied and the effect of temperature on the intergranular fracture mechanism of the MA interface was explored.

Mechanical Behavior Characterization of a Stainless Steel Dissimilar Metal Weld Interface : In-situ Micro-Tensile Testing on Carburized Martensite and Austenite

“…More details on the in-situ tensile machine components and the sample preparation are given in [24].…”

Design and Improvement of the Connection Between the Steel Wire Rope and Shell for Cobalt-60 Afterloading Source Whip

“…During the test, the welding position frequently bent inside the hole, and the stress accumulated at the welding joint section due to fatigue effects. In addition, the steel wire rope is twisted from multiple strands of steel wire and cannot form a whole, which ultimately leads to fracture at the weak point of the joint [24,25].…”