ALLOY STEEL – PROPERTIES AND USE Edited by Eduardo Valencia Morales Alloy Steel – Properties and Use Edited by Eduardo Valencia Morales Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2011 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. As for readers, this license allows users to download, copy and build upon published chapters even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Romana Vukelic Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer InTech Design Team Image Copyright bluecrayola, 2010. Used under license from Shutterstock.com First published December, 2011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Alloy Steel – Properties and Use, Edited by Eduardo Valencia Morales p. cm. ISBN: 978-953-307-484-9 free online editions of InTech Books and Journals can be found at www.intechopen.com Contents Preface IX Part 1 Stainless Steels: New Approaches and Usages 1 Chapter 1 Alloy Steel: Properties and Use First-Principles Quantum Mechanical Approach to Stainless Steel Alloys 3 L. Vitos, H.L. Zhang, S. Lu, N. Al-Zoubi, B. Johansson, E. Nurmi, M. Ropo, M. P. J. Punkkinen and K. Kokko Chapter 2 Review – Metallic Bipolar Plates and Their Usage in Energy Conversion Systems 29 J. Richards and K. Schmidt Part 2 New Insight in Microalloyed and Low-Alloy Steels 51 Chapter 3 Comments About the Strengthening Mechanisms in Commercial Microalloyed Steels and Reaction Kinetics on Tempering in Low-Alloy Steels 53 Eduardo Valencia Morales Chapter 4 Effect of Niobium on HAZ Toughness of HSLA Steels 87 E. El-Kashif and T. Koseki Part 3 Behaviour of Steels: Influence of the Enviroments 109 Chapter 5 Environmentally Assisted Cracking Behavior of Low Alloy Steels in Simulated BWR Coolant Conditions 111 J. Y. Huang, J. J. Yeh, J. S. Huang and R. C. Kuo Chapter 6 Influence of Dissolved Hydrogen on Stress Corrosion Cracking Susceptibility of Nickel Based Weld Alloy 182 131 Luciana Iglésias Lourenço Lima, Mônica Maria de Abreu Mendonça Schvartzman, Marco Antônio Dutra Quinan, Célia de Araújo Figueiredo and Wagner Reis da Costa Campos VI Contents Chapter 7 SMAW Process in Terms of the Amount of Oxygen 155 Węgrzyn Tomasz Chapter 8 Advanced Austenitic Heat-Resistant Steels for Ultra-Super-Critical (USC) Fossil Power Plants 171 Chengyu Chi, Hongyao Yu and Xishan Xie Part 4 Fatigue in Steels: From the Basic to New Concepts 201 Chapter 9 Metal Fatigue and Basic Theoretical Models: A Review 203 S. Bhat and R. Patibandla Chapter 10 A New Systemic Study Regarding the Behaviour of Some Alloy Steels During Low Cycles Fatigue Process 237 Macuta Silviu Preface The main objective of this book is to show, in a logical sequence, a set of papers presenting new ideas that have been the result of the great advance in the knowledge of steel within the last few decades. Amongst the fundamental topics dealt with is the relationship between steel's properties in terms of its structure and composition and how this is affected by its surrounding environment (i.e. stresses, temperature, strains, etc.). It is not possible to affirm that one knows all the links of this chain with details. But today, thanks to significant technological and theoretical advances, we know the enough to understand the most important phenomena that take place in these according to its uses. In this sense, a number of well-known specialists have consented to write on the various principal branches in this subject and the editor has been responsible for preserving a basic unit among the expert contributions. Each section is devoted to new approaches and usages of the stainless steels, the influence of the environments on the behavior of some class of steels, new structural concepts to understand some fatigue processes and new insight on strengthening mechanisms and toughness in micro-alloyed steels. The kinetics during tempering in low-alloy steels is also discussed through a new set-up that uses a modified Avrami formalism. And each section contains an updated list of references which will allow to the readers to delve further into a particular subject. I am grateful to the authors for their courtesy and patience, and hope that through their efforts this book earns its place alongside the more cited books about alloy steels. Finally, I should like here to acknowledge the sustained helpfulness and dedication of the publisher's staff, in particular of Ms. Romana Vukelic by its insistence for concluding this interesting project. Dr. E. V. Morales Department of Physics, Central University of Las Villas, Villa Clara Cuba [...]... electronic and magnetic structure, and micromechanical properties of austenite and ferrite stainless steel alloys In the present contribution, we review the most important developments within the ab initio quantum mechanics aided steel design with special emphasis on the role of magnetism on the fundamental properties of alloy steels Steels are mainly composed of iron and carbon and special properties. .. all binaries considered here 10 Alloy Steel – Properties and Use Fig 2 Single-crystal shear elastic constants c’(x) and c44(x) for paramagnetic fcc (solid symbols connected with solid lines) and ferromagnetic bcc (blue open symbols connected with dashed lines) Fe1-xMx (M=Al, Si, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, and Rh; 0≤x≤0.1) random alloys The superscripts f and b denote the fcc and bcc phases, respectively The... content of Cr In low Cr alloys, Ni has negligible effect on the SFE when the concentration of Ni is over ~12 at %, while in high Cr alloys, the SFE is nearly linearly proportional to the amount of Ni On Alloy Steel: Properties and Use First-Principles Quantum Mechanical Approach to Stainless Steel Alloys 17 the other hand, Cr decreases the SFE only in low Ni alloys and in high Ni alloys the slope of SFE... (except the chemical and magnetic randomness in the total energy) the total energy difference E between the fcc and bcc structures should be interpreted with precaution and should not be associated with the phase stability of Fe-Cr alloys Nevertheless, we can make our conclusions more robust and identify the primary chemical effects on the phase stability by 14 Alloy Steel – Properties and Use considering... effect on the c’ and c44 is rather small for both fcc and bcc phases The ferromagnetic bcc Fe-based alloys are Alloy Steel: Properties and Use First-Principles Quantum Mechanical Approach to Stainless Steel Alloys 11 more isotropic than the paramagnetic fcc counterparts, and this difference to a large extent is due to the soft tetragonal mode (c’) in the fcc phase With some exceptions, alloying has much... composition and magnetic state dependence of the interfacial energy opens perspectives for the quantum engineering of the Fe-Cr-based alloys Our results present a step in this direction and give guidance for experimental and further theoretical investigations of the interfaces in Fe-Cr based alloys Alloy Steel: Properties and Use First-Principles Quantum Mechanical Approach to Stainless Steel Alloys 25... substantial charge transfer between alloy components or when 8 Alloy Steel – Properties and Use the short range order and local lattice relaxation effects become important To control the above problem, applications are often preceded by a series of test calculations to find the best numerical parameters for the problem in question 4 Results and discussion 4.1 Elastic properties Alloying plays a central role... barrier upon alloying Alloy Steel: Properties and Use First-Principles Quantum Mechanical Approach to Stainless Steel Alloys (a) 15 (b) Fig 6 The (001) interfacial energy (in J m-2) between the Cr-rich α' phase (FexCr1-x) and the Fe-rich α phase (Fe1-yCry) for (a) ferromagnetic and (b) paramagnetic states 4.3 Interfacial energies The interfacial energy (i) between the two phases (Fe-rich and Cr-rich...Part 1 Stainless Steels: New Approaches and Usages 1 Alloy Steel: Properties and Use First-Principles Quantum Mechanical Approach to Stainless Steel Alloys L Vitos1,2,3, H.L Zhang1, S Lu1, N Al-Zoubi1, B Johansson1,2, E Nurmi4, M Ropo4, M P J Punkkinen4 and K Kokko4 2Research 1KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics, 3Uppsala University, 4University... the ferromagnetic -Fe structure Austenitic 4 Alloy Steel – Properties and Use stainless steels form the largest sub-category of stainless steels and comprise a significant amount of Ni as well At low temperature, these alloys exhibit a rich variety of magnetic structures as a function of chemical composition, ranging from ferromagnetic phase to spinglass and antiferromagnetic alignments (Majumdar & . ALLOY STEEL – PROPERTIES AND USE Edited by Eduardo Valencia Morales Alloy Steel – Properties and Use Edited by Eduardo Valencia Morales. stainless steels is the Fe-Cr alloy having the ferromagnetic -Fe structure. Austenitic Alloy Steel – Properties and Use 4 stainless steels form the largest sub-category of stainless steels and. Cuba Part 1 Stainless Steels: New Approaches and Usages 1 Alloy Steel: Properties and Use First-Principles Quantum Mechanical Approach to Stainless Steel Alloys L. Vitos 1,2,3 ,