A creep damage model for high-temperature deformation and failure of 9Cr-1Mo steel weldments

Abstract

A dislocation-based creep model combined with a continuum damage formulation was developed and implemented in the finite element method to simulate high temperature deformation behavior in modified 9Cr-1Mo steel welds. The evolution of dislocation structures was considered as the main driving mechanism for creep. The effect of void growth, precipitate coarsening, and solid solution depletion were considered to be the operating damage processes. A semi-implicit numerical integration scheme was developed and implemented in the commercial finite element code ABAQUS-Standard as a user material subroutine. Furthermore, several creep tests of modified 9Cr-1Mo steel welded specimens were conducted at temperatures between 550-700 °C and stresses between 80-200 MPa. The accuracy of the model was verified by comparing the finite element results with experiments. The comparison between the experimental and computational results showed excellent agreement. The model can be used to simulate and predict the creep-damage behavior of Cr-Mo steel components used as structural applications in power plants.