One of the most common problems encountered in using these steels is the reduction in the creep strength of welded joints, especially in the range of low stresses and long exposures. The joints tend to fail in the intercritical and fine-grained regions of the heat-affected zone (ICHAZ and FGHAZ), characterized for peak temperatures located, respectively, between Ac1 and Ac3 and slightly above Ac3. The failure is known as Type IV crack, and the mechanism for it to occur is not fully understood yet (Bell (1997), Ellis and Viswanathan (1998), Hasegawa et al. (2001), Francis et al. (2006)). Despite this lack of full explanation, it is generally assumed that microstructural changes occurring during the welding and PWHT processes will affect the creep resistance of the welded joint.
Hardness –a macroscopic “probe” commonly used to detect microstructural changes- has been shown to diminish in the ICHAZ after post weld heat treatment (PWHT). However, after Francis et al. (2006), the relationship between hardness and Type IV failure susceptibility is not straightforward: at high stresses, the minimum creep strength microstructure coincides with the minimum hardness microstructure –i.e., the ICHAZ- but at low stresses, typical of service conditions, the creep life is a minimum in the FGHAZ, which does not have the minimum hardness.
The aim of this paper is to report on the first step of a research on the relationship between welding conditions and further creep strength of a P91 steel, by studying the influence of PWHT’s carried out at 760 oC on the hardness profile and the microstructure of multipass welded joints.