This study investigates the effects of long-term artificial-aging on hardness variation in the dissimilar metal weldments for nuclear power plant facilities. These dissimilar welds are inevitably required to join the components in nozzle parts of pres...
This study investigates the effects of long-term artificial-aging on hardness variation in the dissimilar metal weldments for nuclear power plant facilities. These dissimilar welds are inevitably required to join the components in nozzle parts of pressurized vessels, such as austenitic stainless steels and ferritic steels. A artificial thermal aging was conducted in an electrical furnace to simulate material degradation at high temperatures. The test materialswere held at the temperature of 600℃ for 10000 hours and interrupted at various levels of degraded specimens. The degradation of hardness is a well-known phenomenon resulting from long-term aging or high-temperature degradation of structural materials. In this study, the variation of hardness at each position was different, and complicated in relation to microstructures such as twins, grains, precipitates, phase transformations, and residual stresses in dissimilar weldments. We discussed the variation of hardness in terms of microstructural changes during long-term aging.