Development and evaluation of SUS 304H - IN 617 welds for advanced ultra supercritical boiler applications

At moderately high temperature sections of Advanced Ultra Super Critical (AUSC) boilers, welding of superalloys to austenitic steels is inevitable owing to economic aspects of boiler. Welding of SUS 304H and Inconel 617 (IN 617) was attempted using IN 617 filler material employing conventional Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) process and the procedure was successfully established along with optimized welding parameters. Microstructural characterization was carried out to identify various zones on either side of the fusion boundaries. Unmixed Zone and Heat Affected Zone (HAZ) were observed towards SUS 304H fusion boundary while no distinct HAZ was observed towards IN 617 fusion boundary. Micro-hardness profiling indicated decrease in hardness at the HAZ towards SUS 304H fusion boundary. Mechanical properties evaluation at both ambient and elevated temperatures was carried out and data obtained was compared with those of base metals. The tensile strength of the cross weld specimens at high temperatures were observed to be marginally lower than that of IN 617 but significantly more than that of SUS 304H, hence, tolerable. Stress-rupture properties of the cross-weld specimens as tested in this study were found to be intermediate to the base metals' data, thus, suitable for AUSC power plants' boiler applications. Hence, this work gives an insight into welding procedure establishment, microstructural development, variation of mechanical properties at elevated temperatures and stress-rupture properties of the dissimilar metal welds at elevated temperatures.