In designing an elevated temperature vessel with no small deformation of creep, it is required to predict its accumulation throughout the service life. For welded joints to build such a vessel, however, any practical way for prediction. has not been definitive yet.
In the present study, some measurements and analyses by a finite element method (FEM) were made of the creep behavior of a 50 mm thick 304 stainless steel butt-welded joint at 550°C. Narrow gap submerged arc welding was used for preparing it.
Considering metallurgical inhomogeneity in the joint, creep tests were made of the base plate and weld metal in advance. For the heat-affected zone, a "synthetic heat-affected zone" technique was attempted to prepare test specimens.
The obtained data were supplied for the FEM computations. The computations were excuted by elastic analyses with incremental time, while strain contours on the cross-section of the joint were measured by moire photography.
The computations agreed with measurements fairly for creep curves and approximately for strain contours.
