Biaxial Thermal Creep of Alloy 617 and Alloy 230 for VHTR Applications

In this study, we employed pressurized creep tubes to investigate the biaxial thermal creep behavior of Inconel 617 (alloy 617) and Haynes 230 (alloy 230). Both alloys are considered to be the primary candidate structural materials for very high-temperature reactors (VHTRs) due to their exceptional high-temperature mechanical properties. The current creep experiments were conducted at 900 °C for the effective stress range of 15–35 MPa. For both alloys, complete creep strain development with primary, secondary, and tertiary regimes was observed in all the studied conditions. Tertiary creep was found to be dominant over the entire creep lives of both alloys. With increasing applied creep stress, the fraction of the secondary creep regime decreases. The nucleation, diffusion, and coarsening of creep voids and carbides on grain boundaries were found to be the main reasons for the limited secondary regime and were also found to be the major causes of creep fracture. The creep curves computed using the adjusted creep equation of the form $ε=Aσcosh−1(1+rt)+Pσntm$ agree well with the experimental results for both alloys at the temperatures of 850–950 °C.