The system of upper high nickel alloying steel seal ring and lower high nickel alloying steel seal ring, installed in the grooves of turbine, can extend out and fit with the wall of valve cage, resulting in forming a good seal under the pressure. In the project, the failure steel seal ring is considered. This situation had threatened the safety of the whole steam turbine system. The purpose of this study is to identify the failure cause of the steel seal ring used in nuclear steam turbines. New high nickel steel alloy seal ring was compared with the failed seal ring. The dimensions of macroscopic ring with clearly plastic deformation were measured using calipers. Surface morphology of ring was observed by optical microscopy through metallographic analysis. There is a lot of precipitation in the grain boundaries of used seal ring, along with smaller grain size than the new seal ring. To explore the composition of precipitation, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy-dispersive spectrometer (EDS) were used. The results indicated that the concentration of titanium (Ti) and molybdenum (Mo) was higher in the precipitation of used seal ring. At the same time, the hardness and elastic modulus of used seal ring were reduced, measured by nanoindentation test. In-situ SEM tensile testing were used to record and analyze the generation of crack source and crack development under applied load. The reasons of the seal ring failure can be answered because of these experimental results at both macroscopic and microscopic scales. The main reason of the seal ring failure is a combination of long-term stress and elevated temperature during turbine operation. Complex work environment caused recrystallization and recovery, resulting in grain refinement and secondary phase precipitation. Further embodiment, recrystallization and recovery caused the elastic modulus and hardness of used seal ring decrease. Moreover, a lot of secondary phase precipitates appeared at grain boundaries during use. The appearance of secondary phase precipitates become the weakest part of used seal ring. The applied load lead to seal ring failure from the formation of microvoids to microvoids aggregated becoming microcracks until to the appearance of cracks at macroscopic scale. These changes of microscopic structure ultimately reflected in critical plastic deformation of used seal ring.

L’objectif de cette étude est de quantifier la contribution intra et intergranulaire lors d’une sollicitation à haute température d’un alliage de magnésium (AZ31). Afin de répondre à cette problématique scientifique, un essai de traction in situ à haute température dans un MEB a été mis en place. Un important travail de développement a été réalisé autour de cet essai afin de lever un nombre de verrous technique conséquent. Ces verrous expliquent en partie pourquoi il existe aujourd’hui peu d’étude in situ à haute température sur des alliages de magnésium. Un marqueur local ayant la forme d’une microgrille a été déposé sur notre échantillon étant donné que celui-ci n’offre aucun contraste local pour la corrélation d’image numérique (CIN). Afin le dépôt du marqueur local, une cartographie EBSD a été réalisée. À l’aide des joints de grains issus de la carte EBSD, on peut venir superposer les joints de grains aux champs de déformation issue de la CIN.À l’aide des essais de traction in situ à haute température, on a pu mettre en avant l’effet de la température sur les différents mécanismes de déformation actif. Tout ce travail de développement nous permet ainsi de pouvoir localiser les hétérogénéités de déformation plastique à la fois en fonction de l’évolution de la déformation et pour plusieurs températures. D’après les essais menés, on a pu mettre en évidence le fait que plus la température est élevée, que plus les hétérogénéités de déformation plastique se localisent au voisinage des joints de grains. Basé sur une hypothèse cœur/manteau, on a pu venir quantifier la contribution intergranulaire, et mettre en avant que celle-ci devenait plus importante avec la température. / The aim of this study is to quantify the intra and intergranular contribution of the deformation during a high temperature micromechanical test on a magnesium alloy (AZ31). In order to answer this scientific issue, we have developed an in situ tensile test at high temperature within a SEM. It has required a significant preparation work in order to push the current technical limits of this type of test on magnesium alloy. These technical limits can partly explain why there are currently few in situ studies at high temperature on magnesium alloys. A local marker in the form of a microgrid was placed on our sample as it does not provide any local contrast for digital image correlation (DIC). Before the deposition of the microgrid, EBSD mapping was made. Using the grain boundaries from the EBSD, we can superimpose the deformed grain boundaries on the strain map from the DIC.Using high temperature in-situ tensile tests, we were able to highlight the effect of the temperature on the different active deformation mechanisms. This whole development work enables us to locate the plastic deformation heterogeneities both according to the evolution of the deformation and for several temperatures. From the tests conducted, it has been shown that the higher the temperature, the more heterogeneous the plastic deformation heterogeneities are located in the vicinity of the grain boundaries. Based on a heart/coat hypothesis, we were able to quantify the intra and intergranular contribution, and show that it became more important with temperature.

The ductile fracture process, which consists of the nucleation, growth and coalescence of microvoids, was extensively studied for materials deforming homogeneously. For materials with a non-homogeneous deformation behavior, such as those having hexagonal closed packed (HCP) crystal structure, experimental and numerical data is lacking. Therefore, the fracture properties of materials with such HCP structure, like titanium (used in aerospace and biomedical applications), zirconium (nuclear industry) and magnesium (manufacturing industry) are not well understood. The main research objective of this Ph.D. thesis is to better understand the mechanisms governing fracture in commercially pure (CP) titanium. In particular, the effect of grain orientation on void growth is investigated. The fracture process of CP titanium was visualized in model materials containing artificial holes. These model materials were fabricated using a femtosecond laser coupled with a diffusion bonding technique to obtain voids in the interior of titanium samples. Diffusion bonding was carried out either above or below the phase transformation temperature resulting in different microstructures. Changes in void dimensions during in-situ straining were recorded in three dimensions using x-ray computed tomography. Void growth obtained experimentally was compared with the Rice and Tracey model which predicted well the average void growth. However, a large scatter in void growth was observed experimentally and was explained in terms of differences in grain orientation which was confirmed by crystal plasticity simulations. It was also shown that grain orientation has a stronger effect on void growth than intervoid spacing and material strength. Intervoid spacing, however, appears to control whether the intervoid ligament failure is ductile or brittle. While this study showed a good agreement between experiments and simulations on average, there is no direct void growth comparison for particular grain orientations. In a follow-up study, an experimental approach was developed to directly relate the growth of a void to its underlying grain orientation. This is achieved by first annealing CP titanium samples below the α-β phase transformation temperature, then performing electron backscatter diffraction iii (EBSD) and finally diffusion bonding the samples together. Samples were then tested in x-ray tomography. This study showed the importance of the local state of strain on void growth. Crystal plasticity simulations that take into account the particular grain orientation and the local state of strain were found to predict well experimental void growth. Crystal plasticity simulations confirmed that the orientation of the voidcontaining grain is more important than the orientation of surrounding grains and more important than the volume fraction of voids, in order to determine void growth. This thesis on the growth and coalescence of voids is important to validate and improve the predictions of ductile fracture models and to design new materials with improved fracture properties.

The current thesis focuses on the deformation behaviour and strain distribution in the microstructure of ductile iron during tensile loading. Utilizing Digital Image Correlation (DIC) and in-situ tensile test under optical microscope, a method was developed to measure high resolution strain in microstructural constitutes. In this method, a pit etching procedure was applied to generate a random speckle pattern for DIC measurement. The method was validated by benchmarking the measured properties with the material’s standard properties. Using DIC, strain maps in the microstructure of the ductile iron were measured, which showed a high level of heterogeneity even during elastic deformation. The early micro-cracks were initiated around graphite particles, where the highest amount of local strain was detected. Local strain at the onset of the micro-cracks were measured. It was observed that the micro-cracks were initiated above a threshold strain level, but with a large variation in the overall strain. A continuum Finite Element (FE) model containing a physical length scale was developed to predict strain on the microstructure of ductile iron. The materials parameters for this model were calculated by optimization, utilizing Ramberg-Osgood equation. For benchmarking, the predicted strain maps were compared to the strain maps measured by DIC, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The DIC and simulation strain maps conformed to a large extent resulting in the validation of the model in micro-scale level. Furthermore, the results obtained from the in-situ tensile test were compared to a FE-model which compromised cohesive elements to enable cracking. The stress-strain curve prediction of the FE simulation showed a good agreement with the stress-strain curve that was measured from the experiment. The cohesive model was able to accurately capture the main trends of microscale deformation such as localized elastic and plastic deformation and micro-crack initiation and propagation.