The use of the bainitic creep strength enhanced ferritic steel T/P23 has increased over the last decade in a wide range of applications including headers, superheater and reheater tubing and in waterwall tubing. Many issues have been reported in weldments of this material, such as hydrogen induced cracking, reheat cracking and stress corrosion cracking. In order to help characterize high temperature cracking phenomena, including reheat cracking, a limited number of laboratory creep crack growth tests are being conducted as part of an ongoing project. Tests were run on as-welded sections with the test specimen crack-tip located in select zones of the weldment. Test temperatures are intended to bookend the range of applications from a waterwall condition of ~482°C (900°F) to the superheat/reheat condition of 565°C (1050°F). This paper describes the results of some early testing at 482°C (900°F). The tests provided useful insight into the cracking susceptibility of the material at this temperature with respect to not only time-dependent cracking, but also fatigue crack growth and fracture toughness. The paper includes details of the test method and results, as well as findings from post-test metallographic examinations of the tested specimens.

The paper describes methods for practical high temperature weldment life assessment, and their application to the analysis of notable high energy piping weldment failures and interpretation of cross-weld data. The methods described in the paper are simplified versions of full continuum damage mechanics (CDM) analysis techniques which have been developed over the last 20 years. The complexity of the CDM methods and their data requirements has been a barrier to their more widespread use. The need for simplified methods has been driven by the need for risk assessment of in-service high temperature welded piping and headers around the world, the need to connect cross-weld data to weld joint design and assessment, and in general, the need to develop suitable guidelines for evaluating the strength of weldments relative to that of base metal.