Weld repair and in service damage in power plant steels

Weld repair of power generation steels remains a vital part of the life management process. The repaired components go on to experience service loading and therefore the creep behaviour of the weld repair regions needs to be understood. A key goal of this project is to link the observed damage in the heat affected zone of the post-creep test repair welds to the observed distribution of particles, grain size/features and other relevant pre-test microstructural observations in the repair welds. Low alloy and creep strength enhanced ferritic steels as well as dissimilar metal welds will be assessed.