Fracture toughness properties of duplex stainless steels

Abstract: Good toughness properties in base and weld material enable the use of duplex stainless steels (DSS) in critical applications. DSS offer high strength compared to common austenitic stainless steels. The high strength can be utilized to reduce the wall thickness and accordingly accomplish reduction of cost, welding time and transportation weight, contributing to ecological and energy savings. Although DSS have been used successfully in many applications the last decades, the full utilisation in pressure vessels has been restricted due to conservative design rules. The consequences of failure in a pressure vessel are often very severe and it is accordingly important to verify a high ductility and fracture toughness.In this study fracture toughness data has been generated that has been used to analyse the brittle failure model in the European pressure vessel code EN 13445. The evaluation of the results has been made successfully by the master curve analysis, previously applied to ferritic steels. The master curve analysis includes calculation of a reference temperature, which can be correlated to an impact toughness transition temperature. A correlation between fracture and impact toughness results is necessary for a practically applicable design code. The heat distribution and austenite reformation have been modelled to verify satisfactory toughness properties in the heat affected zone. A similar model was used to evaluate the nucleation and diffusional growth of sigma phase during isothermal heat treatment or continuous cooling.For future stainless steel development, the availability of satisfactory correlations between composition, microstructure and mechanical properties are essential to optimize alloy design. Stainless steel data has been analysed to find approximate relations between mechanical properties and the chemical composition, grain size, ferrite content, product thickness and solution hardening size misfit parameter. The solution hardening effect was successfully predicted by the Labusch-Nabarro relation and multiple regression analyses were used to evaluate hardening equations for stainless steel.