Study on the Improvement of Weld-joint Reliability in Waterwall Tubes of the Ultra Supercritical Coal Fired Boiler

The low alloy-steel material(1.0Cr-0.5Mo, SA213T12), which has widely been used for the waterwall tube in the conventional power plant, do not have enough creep rupture strength for waterwall tubes of the Ultra-supercritical(USC) boilers. According to this reason, the high-strength low alloy-steel(2.25Cr-1.0Mo, SA213T22) has newly been adopted for the waterwall tube in the USC boilers. This paper presents failure analysis on weld-joint of the waterwall tubes in USC boilers. Visual inspections were performed to find out the characteristics of the fracture. Additionally both microscopic characteristics and hardness test were carried out on failed tube samples. Failures seem to happen mainly because the welding process has not been conducted strictly.(preheating, P.W.H.T and so forth). Thus, this paper has the purpose to describe the main cause of the poor welding process and to explain how to prevent similar failures in those weld-joints.