Effects of inclusions on fracture toughness of reduced-activation ferritic/martensitic F82H-IEA steels

Tanigawa, Hiroyasu; Sawahata, Atsushi; Sokolov, M. A.*; Enomoto, Masato*; Klueh, R. L.*; Koyama, Akira*

The effects of microstructural inhomogeneity of F82H-IEA was investigated focusing on inclusion. It turned out that Ta does not form MX precipitates, but it forms complex AlO;Ta(V,Ti)O inclusions, or simple Ta(V)O inclusions. The complex inclusions are rather dominant in the plate obtained from the bottom of the ingot, but not in the plate from the middle of the ingot. SEM observations also revealed that broken complex inclusions tended to be observed at the crack-initiation site. These results suggest that the scatter of toughness values is correlated with this microstructural inhomogeneity, as the MC method assumes the material has a homogeneous microstructure.