Creep and dimensional stability of high purity niobium electron-beam welds

A study was conducted to characterize the microstructure of electron beam welds in high purity niobium and its effect on creep behaviour at room temperature. The parent material was 2 mm sheet with a 50 μm grain size. The weld fusion zone had ∼1 mm grains, implying that these grains all intersected the free surface. The parent material showed no room temperature creep deformation below the yield stress, but room temperature creep of weld specimens caused up to 10% strain in the weld region at ∼75% of the yield strength, over 1–2 months. Creep deformation was not smooth or continuous; the strain saturated at some value, and then after an incubation time, the strain increased and saturated again several times over 1–2 months. The magnitude of the strain for several specimens was similar but the creep deformation behavior was highly dependent on the actual microstructure and loading history. An initial prestrain with unloading shut down the creep deformation mechanism at the prior stress due to a dislocation-locking effect. The local stresses in the weld fusion zone arose from anisotropic elastic interactions due to different crystal orientations that caused local regions to exceed the yield strength.