Tensile deformation behaviour of a dissimilar metal weldment of P91 and 347H steels

Deformation of a weldment is governed by the mechanical properties of its base metals and fusion zone. In a weldment, the base metals and fusion zone exhibit changing microstructural features with various phases present along the weldment. Specifically, the heat affected zone of a base metal exhibits a heterogeneous microstructure generated during weld thermal cycles and by post‐weld heat treatment. As a result, the mechanical properties in a weldment are often non‐uniformly distributed. In this study, tensile tests combined with digital image correlation were performed to obtain the non‐uniform distributions of the mechanical properties of a weldment composed of P91 and 347H steels. From the experimental tensile tests, it was found that the 347H base metal had significantly distinct mechanical properties compared to the other zones of the weldment. Furthermore, the 347H base metal had the lowest yield stress but the highest strain hardening exponent. Because of its lowest yield stress, the 347H base metal had the highest plastic strain accumulation at any stage of global deformation. However, the strain hardening rate of the P91 base metal enabled it to accumulate the necessary plastic strain to activate its necking first. Therefore, the failure location of the P91‐347H weldment was expected to occur at the P91 base metal. A 3D finite element simulation of the tensile deformation of P91‐347H weldment also suggested the same. However, from the present experimental observations, one weldment out of three was found to fail unexpectedly at the heat affected zone of the P91 base metal. The reason for this unexpected failure was determined by microscopic analysis to be the presence of a large defect.