Evaluating the residual life of exposed components in power industry is a very important procedure inroutine examination. The microstructures of a series of X20CrMoV12.1 martensitic superheater tube samples in a boiler in different service periods were investigated extensively to extract a quantitative relationship. During long-term service from start to rupture, hardness decreased monotonically with life depletion, and the decrease of hardness in prior austenite grain boundary was steeper than that in the matrix. Microstructure observation showed obvious damage characteristics, including carbide coarsening and martensite decomposing, and the martensite structure decomposed completely in rupture state. The morphology, distribution and composition of the main precipitates M23 C6 varied distinctly. The aspect ratio of coarsened carbides along grain boundary increased several fold with respect to their original size. The composition of coarsened M23 C6 carbide shows the most regular trend of Cr enrichment and the statistical result of Cr enrichment in M23 C6 shows a linear correlation between the ratio of Cr to Fe and service time to the power of 3/2, which may be considered as an index of material degradation due to long-term service exposure.
The effects of spinning deformation and subsequent heat treatments on the mechanical properties and microstructure of 18Ni Co-free Maraging steel （T250） tube were evaluated comparatively with the perform. An obvious radial shrinkage is detected in spun tubes after heat treatment and the magnitude of the shrinkage induced by solution treatment is almost the same as that by aging. Plastic deformation during spinning elongated the grains severely in the direction of metal flow. The solution treatment resulted in a drastically refined grain and recrystallised microstructure, removing the effect of plastic deformation, relieving the tangential residual stress and strain and improving hardness. Subsequent aging obtained a tempered microstructure, enhancing hardness values strikingly for precipitation strengthening. XRD （X-ray diffraction） analysis indicated that the reversed austenite formed in a plate-like along the grain boundaries and the volume fraction of austenite in spun tube was more than double that in the preform. These results imply that the residual stress and stain induced by spinning process and reversed austenite forming during aging might have the similar contribution to the radical shrinkage.
Standardarized creep and rupture strength tests were conducted for commercial T91 martensitic heat-resistant steel at 650℃and corresponding microstructure was characterized by BSED, TEM and EDS. The martensitic microstructure degenerated seriously during creep exposure, including martensitic substructure recovering, carbides coarsening, dissolving and precipitating. EDS analysis shows that the M23C6 carbides in different morphologies have dissimilar compositions. The rod/sheet like M23 C6 particles within the matrix contain more additions, which might precipitate in situ while fine MX particles were re-solving. The high content of silicon in these rod/sheet like M2aC6 carbides is probably related to self diffusion coefficient increasing for the exposed condition at 650 ~C close to Curie temperature To. For those reasons, martensite substructure becomes unstable, and microstructure evolution is accelerated and leads to creep strength deteriorating severely.
