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Boiler tube failure analysis is more complicated than the water main pipe since temperature is

involved. In the Figure we can see that the major four causes of boiler tube failure is wear,
corrosion, temperature and stress.

Wear

Wear, which lead to locally metal loss mechanically seldom comes from the improper
installation of boiler which can be avoid by following installation procedure and regularly
inspection. Erosion is the major reason that caused the decreasing of OD/ID which has less
mechanical strength and rupture eventually. The four major locations that erosion occurs are at
the fire side, the preboiler, the afterboiler, and the water side and steam side.

Fire-side mechanisms cause most erosion-related failures and can be further subdivided as
erosion related to soot blowing, steam cutting, fly- ash attack, coal-particle impingement, and
falling slag. Fluidized-bed and other special-purpose boilers sometimes suffer severe attack.
Boilers burning wood chips and bagasse are often eroded by entrainment of tramp
contaminants such as sand and other foreign material in furnace gases. Incinerators suffer
similar fire-side problems. Because fire-side mechanisms cause most erosion-related failures,
each mechanism will be dis cussed in detail.

Erosive metal loss on water-side surfaces is comparatively rare. Cases do occur, however.
Internal-surface discontinuities or solid foreign objects lodged within tubes can disturb flow,
increase turbulence, and cause wastage.

Preboiler attack is confined primarily to feedwater systems. Turbine erosion is common in


afterboiler regions. Burner nozzles, blowdown piping, condensate return lines, and many other
boiler components are also eroded.

Corrosion

Corrosion is one of the major causes the boiler tube failure which will lead to the metal loss on
the tube surface. Leakage and rupture of tube due to increasing stress and strain are two
common failure mode of corrosion attack. Sometime the build-up of corrosion product (debris)
will cause clogging of tube. The corrosive media can come from environment, coal ash, water
even from service and maintenance. Different corrosion mechanism can be characterized by
visual exam generally.

Caustic corrosion attack --- Localized wall loss on the ID surface of the tube, resulting in
increased stress and strain in the tube wall

Oxygen Pitting --- Aggressive localized corrosion and loss of tube wall, most prevalent near
economizer feedwater inlet on operating boilers. Flooded or non-drainable surfaces are most
susceptible during outage periods.
Acid Attack --- Corrosive attack of the internal tube metal surface, resulting in an irregular pitted
or, in extreme case, a swiss cheese appearance of the tube ID

Superheater Fireside Ash Corrosion --- External tube wall loss and increasing tube strain. Tubes
commonly have a pock-marked appearance when scale and corrosion products are removed.

Waterwall Fireside Corrosion --- External tube metal loss( wastage) leading to thinning and
increasing tube strain.

Temperature

In condition that boiler tube metal exposed under temperature exceed design limit, rupture will
happen. Rupture part shows a longitudinal open on the tube wall, usually described as fish
mouth.

Short-term Overheat --- Failure results in a ductile rupture of the tube metal and is normally
characterized by the classic fish mouth opening in the tube where the fracture surface is a thin
edge.

Long-term Overheat(Creep) --- The failed tube has minimal swelling and a longitudinal split that
is narrow when compared to short-term overheat. Tube metal often has heavy external scale
build-up and secondary cracking.

High-temperature Oxidation --- Similar in appearance and often confused with fireside ash
corrosion, high-temperature oxidation can occur locally in areas that have the highest outside
surface temperature relative to the oxidation limit of the tube material. Determining the actual
root cause between the mechanisms of ash corrosion or high-temperature oxidation is best
done by tube analysis and evaluation of both ID and OD scale and deposits.

Graphitization --- Long-term operation at relatively high metal temperatures can result in
damage in carbon steels of higher carbon content, or carbon-molybdenum steel, and result in a
unique degradation of the material in a manner referred to as graphitization.

Stress

Both static load and cyclic load will cause the failure of boiler tube. Static load usually shows in
the case called stress corrosion crack which is the failure happens in the combination of
tensile stress and corrosive media. The tensile stress can come from external force or from
improper heat treatment on boiler tube. Cyclic load comes from vibration will cause fatigue
failure. Internal pressure is also a physical cause leading to the rupture or leakage when tube
wall is thinned by other failure mechanism.

Stress Corrosion Cracking --- Failures from SCC are characterized by a thick wall, brittle-type
crack. May be found at locations of higher external stresses, such as near attachments.
Mechanical Fatigue --- Damage most often results in an OD initiated crack. Tends to

be localized to the area of high stress or constraint.

Corrosion Fatigue --- ID initiated, wide transgranular cracks which typically occur adjacent to
external attachments.

Common type of welding defect:

Lack or incomplete of fusion

Usually referred as cold lapping or cold shuts. The weld material fails to fuse with the
wall of the base material. It will significantly reduce the bearing area, low down the weld
joint mechanical property, produce stress concentration area, which will cause cracks
and failure.

Lack or excess of penetration

The weld bead fails to enter the root of the weld joint, or two opposing beads are failed
to fuse to each other and the weld bead fails to touch the toe of a fillet weld.

Undercut

The weld material fails to fill up the weld joint and leaves a groove along with the weld.
This defect will also reduce the bearing area of weld cross section and thus cause stress
concentration.

Porosity

When weld beads are solidified, the gas remains in the liquefied weld material will form
cavities and leaves porosity in the weld bead, or on the surface of the weld bead.

The porosity will reduce the bearing area of weld joint and cause potential cracks, failure

Slag inclusions

There are three kinds of inclusion: tungsten inclusion, oxide inclusion and slag
Tungsten inclusions.

Oxide inclusions

The slag flux used a byproduct of melting shielding material flux- during welding
process. As the weld bead cooling downing, the melt flux will be solidified on or in the
weld beads. With the slag as impurity of weld beads, the strength and integration of
weld is reduced.

Cracks

During and after welding, there are many factors affect the weld beads and left micro
defects known as cracks.

There are two major types of cracks: hot cracks and cold cracks

Hot cracks: the hot cracks are generally over occurs at high temperature: usually higher
than 538 . There are two kinds of hot cracks: centerline and crater cracks. Centerline
cracks are consisting of two types: segregation cracking, and bead shape cracking.

Another crack is crater crack. Crater cracking occurs when the welding operator stops
welding prior to finishing a pass on a weld joint, leaving a wide, thin depression at the
end. It can also appear in areas that have been tack welded when the corresponding
weld passes does not meet fully against the tacks.

Cold cracks: cold crack occurs at lower temperature and it takes long time to show its
effect. Cold cracking is often referred to as hydrogen-induced and/or heat-affected zone
(HAZ) cracking

Distortions

After the welding, the base material will show certain extend of deformation, called
distortions. The deformation results from the expansion and contraction in the heat
effect area during heat and cool recycle in the welding process. The stress or even
fracture could also result from the deformation. The distortion can be longitudinal,
transverse, angular, twisting and bowing. The distortion will greatly affect the precision
and load bearing capacity of weldment.

Burn-Through

When weld metal to penetrate the weld zone result from too much heat or excessive
amount of root opening causes excessive, and leaves a hole on base metal, it is called
burn-through.

Case of Study

Introduction

An eleven section Boiler was found to be leaking after two years of service. Two out of
11

sections from the failed boiler were submitted for determining the cause of failure. The

sections were delivered in pieces to the laboratory for failure analysis. The common

environmentally cause of boiling tube failures includes overheating, corrosion, erosion,

mechanical fatigue and caustic attack. By taking possible environmental causes into

consideration, visual examination, chemical, mechanical and metallographic analyses


was

performed on the submitted boiler sections to look for root cause of the failure.

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Atlas Evaluation & Inspection Services 943 EAST HAZELWOOD AVENUE, RAHWAY, NJ
07065-5633 PHONE: 732.388.7711 | FAX: 732.388.7767 | www.aeisndt.com Failure
Analysis Case Study Failure Analysis Case Study

Visual examination
In figure 1. Examination of the fractured edges of the pieces showed that there was only
one piece, arrow, in Figure 1, that had cracked during service. This section will be
referred to as Section A and the other section as Section B in failure analysis. The inside
surface (waterside) as noted through the broken ends, had deposits up to a thickness of
about 1/8 inch as shown in Figure 2. No evidence found to indicate corrosion pitting or
appreciable thinning. The fracture surface was brittle, typical of grey cast iron. Close
examination of the nine inch delivery port elastomer sealing rings showed that these
rings had failed on both the sections during service.

Chemical anlysis

A chemical analysis conducted on the two boiler sections yielded the following
composition

Table 1 Chemical composition of Section A and Section B

Section A Section B Typical Grey Cast Iron

Carbon 2.97 3.03 2.5 / 4.0 Manganese 0.6 0.57 0.2 / 1.0 Phosphorus 0.068 0.068 0.002 /
1.0 Sulphur 0.05 0.068 0.02 / 0.025 Silicon 2.16 2.28 1.0 / 3.0

The chemical analysis confirms that the material of the sections is cast iron as specified
by manufacturer. Carbon% and Sulfur% conformed to the requirement of chemical
composition

Figure 1: Assembly of broken segments of the Boiler Sections

Figure 2: Deposits on the inside surface (waterside) of the fractured segment

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Atlas Evaluation & Inspection Services 943 EAST HAZELWOOD AVENUE, RAHWAY, NJ
07065-5633 PHONE: 732.388.7711 | FAX: 732.388.7767 | www.aeisndt.com Failure
Analysis Case Study Failure Analysis Case Study of ASTM A278 for Gray Iron Castings for
Pressure-Containing Parts for Temperatures Up to 350o C.
Mechanical Test Tensile test specimens were taken from a non heat transfer location
near the nine inch delivery port on each of the two boiler sections. Table 2 Mechanical
test result of Section A and Section B

Section A Section B Tensile strength 8,600 psi 10, 500 psi Hardness tests Brinnel
scale load of 3000 Kgs BHN 126/126 BHN 143/143

A tensile strength of about 20,000 psi would be typically expected with the chemical
compositions by ASTM A 278. The results obtained on test specimens removed from the
farthest end (non heat transfer area) were practically half the value. Hardness values at
the two locations were found similar that the both the locations have been softened to
similar levels.

Microscopic Examination Cross-section of fracture edge and non heat transfer location
of Section A were metallographically prepared for examination. Figures 3 showed
corrosion attack in general and around the graphite flakes on the water side up to depth
about 0.020 inch. The bulk of the microstructure at the core was graphite flakes in a
matrix of pearlite with some ferrite as shown in Figure 4. Transformation products of
pearlite to ferrite at various stages could be seen between the surface scale and the core
structure. No martensite was observed at all.

Discussion

Figure 3 Corrosive Attack on Water Side Surface 375X Magnification

Figure 4 Section Core Microstructure 375X Magnification

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parallel indicates that the stresses and localized material defects responsible for the
cracking. The flame path runs along the surface of the crown in a plane normal to the
cracks suggesting that the stresses could be the result of the differential temperatre
between the crown area and the restraining baffles at the back on the water side,
showed in figure 5.

Figure 5 Restraining Baffles Behind Crown Loss of strength is also a cumulative effect of
heat cycles that the metal has gone through. It is evident that the boiler sections have
seen temperatures high enough to have softened the metal. Conclusions The
Composition of the cast iron sections are as specified by the manufacturer. The material
composition conforms to the requirement of ASTM A 278 for Gray Iron Castings for
Pressure Containing Parts for temperatures up to 350 C. The tensile strength at the time
of failure was poor. Stresses generated by overheating crossed the threshold limit to
cause the failure. Protective devices were unable to prevent such an overheating.

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