Coherent Laves Phase Finely Precipitated in Heat Resisting High-W and 10% Cr Ferritic Steels

Abstract

In recent advanced high Cr ferritic steels, it is known that the Laves phase precipitates during creep test when the steels contain a relatively high level of Mo+W content. The Laves phase is believed to be granular in shape and to exist in the boundaries of lath, block, packet and prior austenite grains, but a number of fine Laves-phase precipitates are found to exist even inside the martensite lath in the tempered steels containing 10 mass% Cr and 4.6 mass% W. The shape of this Laves phase is plate-like, and the size is below 300 nm. The crystallographic relationship between the fine Laves phase and the matrix phase is as follows; (111)_ferrite//(001)_Laves and [011]_ferrite//[110]_Laves. In the microstructure aged at 923 K for 714 Ms, the fine precipitates of the Laves phase disappear inside the martensite lath, and coagulated Laves phase is observed at the lath-, block-, or packet- boundaries. Only the low C steel containing 0.08% C and 3% W shows a few amounts of the fine precipitates of the Laves phase after aging at 923 K for 7.268 Ms. This compositional dependence of the precipitation behaviour can be understood qualitatively with the aid of the System-Free-Energy Concept.