Many of the degradation mechanisms relevant to power plant components can be exacerbated by stresses that reside within the material. Good design or structural integrity assessments require therefore, an accounting of residual stresses, which often are introduced during welding. To do this it is necessary to characterise the stresses, but this may not be possible in thick components using non-d...

The effects of boron on the grain boundary and surface energies in iron at 900 and 1000 OC and AISI 316 stainless steel in the temperature range 950-1 250 OC were investigated. It was found that boron reduced these energies in a manner typical of an element with low solubility in the matrix. It has been found that boron improves the grain boundary strength of iron at low temperatures [I] and in...

Nitrogen in austenitic stainless steels and its effect on the stacking fault energy (SFE) has been the subject of intense discussions in the literature. Until today, no generally accepted method for the SFE calculation exists that can be applied to a wide range of chemical compositions in these systems. Besides different types of models that are used from first-principle to thermodynamics-based...

Fe-Mn-C austenitic steels exhibit outstanding high-ductile deformation in their plastic regions along with significant microstructural evolution. In this study, to characterize the microstructural evolution during deformation of these steels, line-profile and texture analyses were carried out using X-ray diffraction. The convolutional multiple whole profile fitting procedure was used for a line...

Starting in 1976, the 3MA-methodology (Micromagnetic, Multiparameter, Microstructure and Stress Analysis) was developed. 3MA has its basis in micromagnetic NDT techniques which are the measurement of magnetic Barkhausen noise, of the magnetic incremental permeability, of the eddy current impedance, the harmonic analysis of the magnetic tangential field strength, and the measurement of the dynam...

Transition joints between austenitic stainless steels and ferritic low alloy steels are extensively utilized in many high-temperature applications in energy conversion systems. Problems related to the use of such dissimilar metal welds (DMWs) have long been recognized, because of premature failures often occurring during service, connected to thermal stresses generated at the weld interface and...

The Fe-Cr-Ni stainless steels are well known for their ductile behaviour at cryogenic temperatures. This implies development and evolution of plastic strain fields in the stainless steel components subjected to thermo-mechanical loads at low temperatures. The evolution of plastic strain fields is usually associated with two phenomena: ductile damage and strain induced martensitic transformation...

Steels are heavily used in infrastructure and the transportation industry, and enhancing their fatigue resistance is a major challenge in materials engineering. In this study, by introducing a gradient microstructure into 304 austenitic steel, which is one of the most widely used types of stainless steel, we show that a strength gradient substantially enhances the fatigue life of the material. ...

This work describes the optimization of cryogenic treatment (CT) parameters such as the cooling rate, the soaking temperature, the soaking time, the tempering temperature and the tempering time to maximise the tool wear of high speed steel tools in dry turning of AISI 316 grade austenitic stainless steels by Taguchi method. For this purpose, four iteration of Taguchi design (L16) have been used...