The stress and strain distribution in X10CrMoVNb9-1 power engineering steel after long time degradation studied by the ESPI system

Maintenance of assets and equipment in power plants is essential for their safety and is required to help the plant stay active. In this paper, the specimens manufactured from a pipe of X10CrMoVNb9-1 (P91) power engineering steel in the as-received state and after operating for 80 000 h at internal pressure of 8.4 MPa and temperature of 540ºC were subjected to tests using electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) under static loading of up to 2.5 kN. Such a procedure enables assessment of strain and stress distribution maps to compare material integrity in the as-received state and after exploitation in its elastic range. The measurements conducted showed no effect of long time operation on the mechanical response of P91 steel under the power installations conditions since the field strain distributions for each type of specimen were found to be similar.