The Effect of Predeformation on Creep Strength of 9% Cr Steel.

Martensitic creep-resistant P92 steel was deformed by different methods of severe plastic deformation such as rotation swaging, high-pressure sliding, and high-pressure torsion at room temperature. These methods imposed significantly different equivalent plastic strains of about 1-30. It was found that rotation swaging led to formation of heterogeneous microstructures with elongated grains where low-angle grain boundaries predominated. Other methods led to formation of ultrafine-grained (UFG) microstructures with high frequency of high-angle grain boundaries. Constant load tensile creep tests at 873 K and initial stresses in the range of 50 to 300 MPa revealed that the specimens processed by rotation swaging exhibited one order of magnitude lower minimum creep rate compared to standard P92 steel. By contrast, UFG P92 steel is significantly softer than standard P92 steel, but differences in their strengths decrease with increasing stress. Microstructural results suggest that creep behavior of P92 steel processed by severe plastic deformation is influenced by the frequency of high-angle grain boundaries and dynamic grain coarsening during creep.

The Effect of Ultrafine-Grained Microstructure on Creep Behaviour of 9% Cr Steel.

The effect of ultrafine-grained size on creep behaviour was investigated in P92 steel. Ultrafine-grained steel was prepared by one revolution of high-pressure torsion at room temperature. Creep tensile tests were performed at 873 K under the initially-applied stress range between 50 and 160 MPa. The microstructure was investigated using transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy equipped with an electron-back scatter detector. It was found that ultrafine-grained steel exhibits significantly faster minimum creep rates, and there was a decrease in the value of the stress exponent in comparison with coarse-grained P92 steel. Creep results also showed an abrupt decrease in the creep rate over time during the primary stage. The abrupt deceleration of the creep rate during the primary stage was shifted, with decreasing applied stress with longer creep times. The change in the decline of the creep rate during the primary stage was probably related to the enhanced precipitation of the Laves phase in the ultrafine-grained microstructure.