Welding Soundness of a Thick-Walled 9Cr-1Mo Steel

High Cr ferritic/martensitic steels are demanded to join using favorable welding processes with economical and metallurgical advantages in order to apply to the thick-walled reactor pressure vessel of a very high temperature gas cooled reactor. Narrow gap welding technology was adopted to weld a thick-walled 9Cr-1Mo-1W steel with thickness of 110mm. The welding integrity was checked by non-destructive examination, optical microscopy and hardness test, and the homogeneity through welding depth was checked by absorbed impact energy and tensile strength. The optimizing welding conditions resulted that a narrow U-grooved gap with almost parallel edges was sound in actual practice, and the coarse grain zone was minimized in the heat affected zone. The absorbed energy of 75±25 J through welding depth was acceptable in scatter band to check the uniformity through the welding depth. The ultimate tensile stress and yield stress were about the same through welding depth at 650±10 MPa and 500±10 MPa, indicating no difference through welding depth. Elongation was also almost same through depth, and the fracture surface was appeared as a normal. The weld metal had similar mechanical properties to base metal. The upper self energy of weld metal was 194J, and the ductile-brittle transition temperature was 30°C. The tensile behavior was the typical trend with temperature, and YS and UTS of weldment were slightly higher than base metal by nearly below 10%. Thus, it concluded that the soundness of the narrow gap welding of a thick-walled 9Cr-1Mo-1W steel was confirmed in terms of the welding uniformity through the depth and mechanical properties.