Creep and Fracture Mechanisms of Heat-Resistant Steels

Dear Colleagues,

In the present days, environment protection from greenhouse gas emissions encourages development of more efficient power plants. Enhancing the efficiency of power plant equipment could be a powerful lever to decrease carbon dioxide emissions.

Efficiency can be improved by increasing the temperature and pressure of the steam which serves as working fluid. In past decades, steam conditions were increased from 538ºC/18.5 MPa to 593-620ºC/30 MPa, which provided an efficiency increase of nearly 6-7%. To further increase temperature and pressure of the steam, development of new materials with increased creep and corrosion resistance is needed.

Most of the current power plants were designed to operate at constant load. However increase of generation from variable renewable energy sources requires adjusting their output to balance the demand. The changes in operating conditions lead to decreasing the lifetime of the components due to creep-fatigue and thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF). Therefore new materials for thermal power plants should also be resistant to creep-fatigue and TMF.

The aim of this Special Issue is to survey recent progress in the area of high-temperature steels for thermal power plants and their applications. The mechanisms of microstructural changes under service conditions should be studied in detail to obtain a fundamental knowledge providing the progress in production of the steels with enhanced properties. Special attention will be paid to the latest achievements in theoretical and experimental investigations of mechanisms of microstructural changes/evolutions during high temperature creep, methods for creep life prediction, fracture mechanisms under conditions of creep-fatigue and TMF. Studies focused on the analysis of mechanical behaviour and microstructures of weld joints of the high-temperature steels are also welcome.

Dr. Valeriy Dudko
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Creep mechanisms
• Fracture mechanisms
• High chromium martensitic steels
• Thermo-mechanical fatigue
• Creep fatigue
• Microstructure evolution
• Post weld heat treatment