There have been concerted world wide efforts to develop steels suitable for use in efficient fossil fired power plants. Ferritic alloys containing between 9 and 12 wt-% chromium are seen as the most promising materials in this respect, especially for thick walled components such as headers and the main steam pipe in boilers. However, the performance of the improved steels has often not been realised in service, because premature failures occur in the heat affected zone of welded joints in a phenomenon referred to as type IV cracking. This review assesses the relationship between the composition and microstructure of 9-12 Cr steels, the welding and fabrication procedures and how these factors translate into a propensity for type IV failures.

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-destructive methods. These difficulties, and a paucity of relevant engineering data, have led to an increasing emphasis on the development and validation of suitable modelling tools. Advances are prominent in the estimation of welding residual stresses in austenitic stainless steels. The progress has been less convincing in the case of ferritic alloys, largely due to the complexities associated with the solid state phase transformations that occur in multipass welding. We review here the metallurgical issues that arise in ferritic steel welds, relate these to the difficulties in calculating residual stresses, and highlight some stimulating areas for future research.

Abstract. Weld residual stresses often approach, or exceed, the yield strength of the material, with serious implications for the integrity of engineering structures. It is not always feasible to measure residual stresses, so integrity assessments often rely heavily on numerical models. In ferritic steels, the credibility of such models depends on their ability to account for solid-state phase transformations that can have a controlling effect on the final residual stress state. Furthermore, a better understanding of weld transformations provides an opportunity to engineer the weld stress state and microstructure for improved life. In this paper the complementary merits of synchrotron X-ray and neutron diffraction are exploited both to verify and refine weld models and to inspire the development of weld filler metals to control weld stresses. In terms of weld filler metal design, Xray diffraction is used to characterize phase transformations in real time during realistic weld cooling cycles, for understanding small-scale behaviour, and identifying features that need to be incorporated into finite-element models. Meanwhile, neutron diffraction is used to elucidate the practical consequences of solid-state phase transformations on the macroscopic scale, thereby providing crucial validatory structural integrity data.

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Residual stress in the vicinity of a weld can have a large influence on structural integrity. Here the extent to which the martensite-start temperature of the weld filler metal can be adjusted to mitigate residual stress distributions in ferritic steel welds has been investigated. Three single-pass groove welds were deposited by manual-metal-arc welding on 12mm thick steel plates using filler metals designed to have different martensite-start temperatures. Their residual stress distributions were then characterised by neutron diffraction. It was found that a lower transformation temperature leads to a potentially less harmful stress distribution in and near the fusion zone. The experimental method is reported and the results are interpreted in the context of designing better welding consumables.

Residual stresses that arise as a result of welding can cause distortion, and also have significant implications for structural integrity. Martensitic filler metals with low--transformation--temperatures can efficiently reduce the residual stresses generated during welding, because the strains associated with the transformation compensate for thermal contraction strains during cooling. However, it is vital that a low weld transformation temperature is not obtained at the expense of other important material properties. This article outlines the alloy design process used to develop appropriate low--transformation-temperature filler materials for the mitigation of residual stresses in both low-alloy ferritic and austenitic stainless steel welds. Residual stresses in single--pass, 6mm bead in groove welds, on 12 mm thick plates, have been measured and compared against those obtained with commercially available conventional austenitic and ferritic filler materials. The filler metal developed here exceeded requirements in terms of weld mechanical properties, while significantly reducing the maximum residual stress in the weld and heat affecter zone.

Thick-section austenitic stainless steels have widespread industrial applications, especially in nuclear power plants. The joining methods used in the nuclear industry are primarily based on arc welding processes. However, it has recently been shown that narrow gap laser welding (NGLW) can weld materials with thicknesses that are well beyond the capabilities of single pass autogenous laser welding. The heat input for NGLW is much lower than for arc welding, as are the expected levels of residual stress and distortion. This paper reports on a preliminary investigation of the through-thickness 2D residual stresses distributions, distortions, and plastic strain characteristics, for the NGLW process using material thicknesses up to 20 mm. The results are compared with those obtained with gas-tungsten arc (GTA) welding. While further work is required on thicker test pieces, preliminary results suggest that the longitudinal tensile residual stresses in NGLW joints are 30e40% lower than those for GTA welds.