Evaluation of damage evolution in nickel-base heat-resistant alloy under creep-fatigue loading conditions

In this study, interrupted creep and creep-fatigue tests of Alloy 617, which is a candidate alloy for boiler tubes and pipes of A-USC (advanced ultra-supercritical) power plants of the 700^oC-class, were conducted to investigate damage evolution process. Also, the change of the micro texture of the alloy was continuously observed at a fixed area to elucidate the mechanism of damage evolution under creep and creep-fatigue loading from the viewpoint of the change of the order of atom arrangement using EBSD (Electron Back-Scatter Diffraction) analysis. The conditions of the creep test were a temperature of 800^oC and the stress of 150 MPa in inert gas (99.9999% Ar). The stress-controlled creep-fatigue tests were carried out at 800^oC in Ar using stress ratio R = -1 and hold time of 10 minutes at peak tension. IQ (Image Quality) values, which are the average sharpness of the obtained diffraction pattern, were used for evaluating the change of the micro texture during the tests. In both creep and creep-fatigue test, intergranular cracks appeared. The IQ value decreased monotonically in the vicinity of grain boundaries with the decrease of fracture life, indicating that the crystallinity of grain boundaries degraded faster than that of grains. This localized damage around grain boundaries was attributed to the intergranular crack propagation in the creep and creep-fatigue test. In addition, all the grain boundaries with IQ value lower than 85% of IQ value in as-received specimen were found to be cracked during both creep and creep-fatigue test. Therefore, there was the critical IQ value around grain boundaries at which intergranular cracks occurred under creep or creep-fatigue loading condition.