Magnetic Testing of Power Plant Steel Deterioration

Abstract

Nowadays, there is increasing importance of the remaining life time estimation of engineering structures. In this work the thermal shock fatigue process induced deterioration of the three different power plant steels was investigated. The tested steels are widely used as steam pipeline base material of power plants. The applied thermal shock fatigue test can model the material degradation due to long term service in high temperature environment. A special AC magnetometer was designed and used for the magnetic measurements at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of BUTE. In this paper a new high sensitivity magnetic measurement is presented for controlling the thermal shock fatigue deterioration. This measurement technique was developed for non-destructive testing of pipelines and pressure vessels of steam power plants.