The design/fabrication of supercritical steam piping for modern units will be using modern materials at advanced steam temperatures, so much of the design guidelines used for the 1970 era plants is outdated. The modern alloys are not fault tolerant in regards to fabrication processes , and the plant designer will need to refer to metallurgists familiar with the new alloys in order to ensure the fabrication procedures do not destroy the assumed strength properties of the new alloys.
Examples of the new alloys are P91, P92, P93 ( SAVE12AD) and nickel based alloys. The ferritic alloys obtain their high temperature creep strength by virtue of a tempered martensitic crystal structure with small amounts of finely dispersed trace elements , and these particular properties are lost if the fabrication processes are not perfect. For example:
a) the martensitic structure of optimum grain size implies the N+T treatment be held at 1950 F for a defined time range ( for crystal size) and cooled faster than -10F/minute to ensure ferrite or pealite are not formed. The spec for the fabrication of any such alloy piece ( pipe, pipe bend , forging , casting) must require individual thermocouples be applied on each piece and the temperature history of each piece be reviewed before the piece is accepted for use . This departs from the default practice of monitoring only 1 piece per batch in the furnace. If you witnessed how the N+T furnace is operated you would see why this is an issue.
b) hot bending of bends must be followed by a full N+T of the bent piece
c) weld repair of large castings must be followed by a full N+T of the piece
d)PWHT procedures are strict , regarding both time vs temperature but also placement of the PWHT thermocouples and the rate at which the piece is heated to the weld preheat temp and to the PWHT temp. Local overheat above the 1st critical temp during these operations could occur if the monitoring T/C's are spaced too far from the heating coils.
e) Reducing the assumed fabrication stresses by the practice of initial shakedown creep relief is not available for these newer alloys as they dont creep relief in the same manner as P22 did.
f) some steam turbine vendors are now requiring zero end raction at the turbine nozzles for both the hot and cold case- not easy to accomplish.
g) modern automated orbital welding machines are better able to meet the qa/qc needs of these alloys, in particualr the very high weld preheat temperatures that tend to cause a manual welder to turn down the preheat to avoid personal injury or stress.
h) as mentioned earlier , the ASME code now identifies a creep strength weld reducion factor for some of these alloys. This may only be ingored for a pure butt weld not subjected to constant axial loads. However, fabricated wyes and els and pipelines eposed to constant axial loads need to consider this weld strength reduction factor.
"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick