Microstructure characteristics and temperature-dependent high cycle fatigue behavior of advanced 9% Cr/CrMoV dissimilarly welded joint

Advanced 9% Cr and CrMoV steels chosen as candidate materials are first welded by narrow-gap submerged arc welding (NG-SAW) to fabricate the heavy section rotor. The present work focuses on studying the high-cycle fatigue (HCF) behavior of advanced 9% Cr/CrMoV dissimilarly welded joint at different temperatures. Conditional fatigue strength of this dissimilarly welded joint was obtained by HCF tests at room temperature (RT), 400 °C and 470 °C. It was observed that the failure occurred at the side of CrMoV base metal (BM), weld metal (WM) and heat affected zone (HAZ) of CrMoV side over 5×107 cycles for the specimens tested at RT, 400 °C and 470 °C. The detailed microstructures of BMs, WMs and HAZs as well as fracture appearance were observed by optical microscopy (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Precipitation and aggregation of carbides along the grain boundaries were clearly detected with the increase of temperature, which brought a negative effect on the fatigue properties. It is interesting to note that the inclusion size leading to crack initiation became smaller for the HCF test at higher temperature. Therefore, reduction in the inclusion size in a welded joint helps to improve the HCF performance at high temperature.