Fe–15Ni–13Cr austenitic stainless steels for fission and fusion reactor applications. I. Effects of minor alloying elements on precipitate phases in melt products and implication in alloy fabrication

Abstract In an effort to develop alloys for fission and fusion reactor applications, 28Fe–15Ni–13Cr base alloys were fabricated by adding various combinations of the minor alloying elements, Mo, Ti, C, Si, P, Nb, and B. The results showed that a significant fraction of undesirable residual oxygen was removed as oxides when Ti, C, and Si were added. Accordingly, the concentrations of the latter three essential alloying elements were reduced also. Among these elements, Ti was the strongest oxide former, but the largest oxygen removal (over 80%) was observed when carbon was added alone without Ti, since gaseous CO boiled off during melting. This paper recommends an alloy melting procedure to mitigate solute losses while reducing the undesirable residual oxygen. In this work, 14 different types of precipitate phases were identified. Compositions of precipitate phases and their crystallographic data are documented. Finally, stability of precipitate phases was examined in view of Gibbs free energy of formation.