A Methodology for Screening Candidate Dissimilar Metal Welds for Repair or Replacement Thomas Sherlock Laney Bisbee Structural

Integrity Associates, Inc. Alex Bonnington Potomac Electric Power Company

Abstract Dissimilar Metal Welds are required in high temperature sections of boiler reheater and superheater tubing to join low alloy steel tubing to the finishing stainless tubing. The intrinsic difference in the coefficients of expansion cause high stresses to develop at the relatively weak ferritic/weld interface. The power generation industry began to experience failures of type 309 stainless steel welds in the early 1980 and has recently s begun to experience nickel-based weld failures on tubes with 150,000 or greater operating hours. For utilities who have or wish to institute a program of periodic inspection and a DMW repair/replacement maintenance strategy, one of the difficulties has been reliable NDE. Radiographic techniques have shown to be of some benefit, but the cost and lost maintenance time due to safety concerns makes it less than ideal. Replication and electrical resistance techniques also have drawbacks from the standpoint of accuracy. In 1996, SI developed an ultrasonic scanning technique for DMWs. In 1998, the DMWs at the Morgantown Station of PEPCO were examined using this technique and reasonably good correlation was found between UT and destructive metallographic techniques. This paper outlines the application of the focused scanning technique used to quantify the damage in DMWs, the means for selecting damaged DMWs for correlation with the technique and the manner in which this information is incorporated into a reliabilitycentered maintenance strategy for improving boiler availability. Introduction In the early 1980 EPRI sponsored workshops to deal with the problem of excessive s, DMW failures in power boilers (1). The main culprit was the use of a 309 type filler material, which has the greater difference in coefficient of thermal expansion vis--vis low alloy steel when compared to nickel-based filler materials. Utilities embarked on programs of inspecting and repairing/replacing damaged welds before they would fail

and cause excessive consequential damage to the boiler tubing and significant losses in unit availability. A computer code, PODIS, was developed by EPRI for the purpose of predicting the rate of damage accumulation in DMWs as a function of tube operating temperature, type of weld, degree of bending stress and number of unit cycles. Some double wall radiographic techniques were developed which were useful in detecting DMW damage, but the main drawback was the cost per radiograph and the exclusion of personnel from the boiler in the vicinity of the radiographic tests. Replication and electrical resistance techniques were also employed, but their accuracy was questionable, as they are primarily surface, as opposed to volumetric, techniques. In the early 1990 ESEERCO (Empire State Electric Energy Research Corporation) s, requested that a review of the PODIS technology be conducted. A utility survey was conducted and it was found that the code was very conservative for nickel-based welds. From this program, a new code (DMW LIFE) was developed for ESEERCO. In the mid1990 SI used the probabilistic DMW LIFE on a project for PEPCO, wherein failure s, projections were made for DMWs , based on a few tube samples per boiler. In general, the predictions were reasonable and showed that weld failures could begin and increase over the next 5 10 years of operation. None did occur before this inspection. Focused Ultrasonic Techniques SI had developed TestPro, a PC-based digital UT system, in the early 1980 One of the s. first utility applications was for determining the wall and internal oxide thickness of SH/RH tubes. Using the principle of focused sound waves, a similar technique was developed for interrogating the weld metal/ferritic interface using a scanning transducer as shown in Figure 1 (2).

Figure 1. DMW Scanning Transducer Assembly.

Based on laboratory and early in-boiler tests, SI felt that an accuracy of +/- 10% on through-wall damage was feasible. Inspection Results During April 1998, the Morgantown Station Unit #1 boiler SH DMWs were examined by SI. The DMWs were located in the penthouse, consisting of 171 platen assemblies with DMWs in tube rows 19 through 24, exclusively. Due to access limitations and the small size of the tubing (1.5-inch diameter), only one scan could be performed on tubes 19, 20, 23 and 24. Two (2) scans were performed on tubes 21 and 22. The inspections were carried out from the space under the header between rows 21 and 22, which limited the available access and speed of the inspection. A total of 870 DMWs were specified for examination, resulting in a total number of scans of 1160 scans, when 2 per tube 21 and 22 are included. Of the specified 1160 scans, 23 (or about 2%) were not performed due to tube surface conditions or access limitations. 336 scans (or about 30%) exhibited no recordable indications. After all data was collected (four twelve hour shifts with two crews of two each), the permanently stored scans of those tubes exhibiting recordable indications were reviewed and sized in approximate 10% increments of tube wall thickness. In addition, a best effort characterization was performed on the indications to differentiate fabrication flaws from service-induced damage. Representative B-Scan images from the DMW inspection were saved to disk, and an example is shown in Figure 2. Of the tubes examined, two (2) were found to have damage levels of about 80%, four (4) were found to have damage levels of about 70%, seven (7) were found with 60% and fourteen (14) were found with levels of 50%. It should be noted that in some instances, a good inspection of the ID of the DMW (left side of Figure 2) could not be performed due to the presence of a wide weld crown or accessibility considerations. This meant that the damage level in the weld could be higher, especially since the ID is a primary initiation spot when bending stresses are high. Thus a damage level of 70% (of the UT visible weld could be somewhat larger when the entire cross section of the weld is examined. Based on the analysis, five welds were recommended for removal and rapid turn-around analysis by PEPCO Metallurgical Laboratory. s

Figure 2. Example of a B-Scan Image from a DMW. Metallurgical Analysis The five samples were sent to the laboratory where each weld was cross-sectioned at o approximately 90 intervals. A summary of the correlations is found in Table 1. Table 1. Summary of Metallurgical and UT Results Wall Thickness 0.345 0.412 0.375 0.413 0.411 0.411 0.400 Extent of OD Damage 0.233 0.339 0.315 0.320 0.118 0.118 0.154 68% 82% 84% 77% 29% 37% 39% UT Results 50% 50% 50% 80% 70% 70% 50% Metallurgical Comments Large OD Notch + Midwall Microcracking OD Creep Microcracking Isolated Slag Inclusion at 31% Through-Wall Isolated Slag Inclusion at 71% Through-Wall OD Creep Microcracking

0.398 0.373 0.372

0.320 0.285 .320

80% 69% 86%

60% 60% 60%

Fine Mid-Wall Microcracking Large OD Notch and Fine Mid-Wall Cracking Large OD Notch + Midwall Microcracking

Typical photomicrographs of the damage are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Typical Photomicrographs of Damage Found in Three of the Welds. OD Notches are on the Right Side of the Photomicrograph.

The metallurgical results, in general, correlated well with the UT results and the large differences in the third row of the summary table can be explained by the mid-wall inclusions, which returned a UT signal, resulting in an overly conservative estimate of the amount of damage. The lack of UT signals from the ID of the DMWs was the cause of the non-conservative UT estimates. It was concluded in PEPCO final report that the s UT technique was a good screening tool for identifying the most severely damaged DMWs. Following a review of all of the data, it was recommended that an additional 32 DMWs be removed from service to ensure the long-term reliability of the superheater. Discussion of Results The overall evaluation of the data showed that the vast majority of tubes (97%) contained less than 50% damage, which is good performance for a unit with 200,000+ operating hours. A plot of damage levels is shown in Figure 4.
Distribution of Damage
90 80 70 60 Damage % 50 40 30 20 10 0 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% % With Damage 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Figure 4. Distribution of Damage in the UT Results. The one factor that could easily explain the good performance of these welds is a rather uniform temperature distribution across the boiler. Using DMW LIFE, an estimate of the damage expected can be made versus temperature and the results are shown in Figure 5.

Damage Index Versus Temperature

1.2

0.8 Damage Fraction

0.6

0.4

0.2

0 980

1000

1020

1040

1060

1080

1100

1120

Temperature, F

Figure 5. Damage Fraction Versus Temperature for 200,000 Hours Operation. The small percentage of tubes that exhibited a damage fraction of 50% or greater operated at temperatures of 1060F or higher (or possibly had very high bending stresses). This is fairly normal for a boiler to have a +/- 50F spread around a main steam outlet temperature of 1000F. Thus it appears that about 3% of the tubes were operating in the temperature range 1060 1090F. In order to assess the value of the inspection and DMW replacement strategy, future failure projections are required to develop a cost/risk benefit analysis. Traditional theory relies on a linear rate of DMW damage accumulation and that is the method for extrapolating damage projections. Also, since a +/- 10% standard deviation in the ability to measure damage with UT seems reasonable, then using the Monte Carlo technique, the uncertainty in the UT DMW damage can easily be expressed as follows: Damage = Damage * (1 +/- 0.1), With the 0.1 randomly picked from a normal distribution with a mean of 1 and a SD of 0.1. If the time of operation is assigned a normalized value of 1, then the probability of tube failures versus operating time can easily be generated as shown in Figure 6.

Percentage of Tubes Failured

45 40 35 30 Percentage Failed 25 20 15 10 5 0 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 Time Increase 1 1.2 1.4 1.6

y = 0.2684x12.317 R2 = 0.9849

Figure 6. Percentage of Population Expected to Fail Versus Operating Time. (Time Value of 1 is the Time of Inspection) A future failure is defined as the randomly generated damage index exceeding 0.95. The population of damage used for this case was the 26 tubes with damage greater than 50% (the population has a mean of 57.7 % damage, with a standard deviation of 9.7%). All of this assumes that the basic mode of boiler operation remains constant for future operating intervals. Firing harder or changing to cyclic operation can drastically change the tube temperature distribution across a boiler and could result in higher than expected failure rates. Since all welds exceeding 50% were removed from service, the new population has a much lower mean damage (15.6%) and higher standard deviation (13.3%). When this model was run for a time increase of 1.5, the projected failure rate was 0.03% for the time interval. What this exercise shows is that the decision to replace the 37 worst welds has reduced the expected number of tube failures over the next (today operating hours * 1.5) time s interval from 9 11 (35 - 40% of 26) to zero for all practical purposes. One very important result of this inspection is that PEPCO now has a map of the DMWs in their boiler. Should it become necessary to retest the DMWs in the future in order to determine that damage accumulation is linear, or that boiler operation has changed, UT testing can be concentrated in the most critical areas, thus reducing

inspection and preparation costs. Such inspections could be staged during very short 2 4 day outages, minimizing boiler downtime. If, after 1.5x hours of additional operation, PEPCO elects to perform a full or limited DMW inspection, similar results should be obtained and selected DMW replacement could be used to extend the failure free period of operation to 2x current operating hours. Conclusions 1. UT testing of DMWs can be rapidly implemented during an outage and has an accuracy of about +/- 10% on damage detection. As with the progress made in the oxide thickness technique, better accuracies can be obtained with more experienced NDE technicians and perhaps some weld crown grinding. Having a DMW damage map enables utilities to make selective DMW replacements during a scheduled outage, which can drastically reduce future failures and maximize boiler availability. It also serves as a tool to avoid wholesale replacement of sections, which is becoming less justifiable in today s competitive generation market. The statistical approach used in this example can readily be extended to riskbased inspection scheduling and economic risk/benefit analysis, which are expected to become more well recognized as maintenance tools of the future.

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References 1. Dissimilar Metal Weld Failure Analysis and Development Program, EPRI CS4252, Final Report, November 1985. 2. Dissimilar Metal Welds for Defect Detection, Characterization and Sizing EPRI International Conference on Boiler Tube Failures in Fossil Plants November 11 - 13, 1997, Nashville, TN.