The Nickel Advantage - Nickel in Stainless Steel - Eurometaux

Chapter 1:
Overview of nickel-containing
stainless steels
Structural stability is a
major reason for their
widespread use at
high temperatures.
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Call Outs in Italics in
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Chapter 3
High Temperature
At elevated, as well as at lower, temperatures, a material is selected on the basis of its properties,
and usually there are compromises. At elevated temperatures, properties of interest to the
designer include mechanical ones, such as yield and tensile strength, creep strength or creep
rupture, ductility, thermal fatigue, and thermal shock resistance. Physical properties of possible
interest include thermal expansion, thermal conductivity, and electrical conductivity. Properties
that show environmental resistance include oxidation, carburization, sulphidation and nitriding.
Fabrication properties include weldability and formability. Other properties such as wear, galling
and reflectivity may also need to be considered.
These properties are of interest at all the temperatures to which the material is subjected, and
it is especially important to look at potential changes to properties during service life. The
structural stability of austenitic stainless steels is a major reason for their widespread use at
high temperatures.
In general, austenitic stainless steels remain strong at elevated temperatures, at least compared
with other materials. Figure 11 compares the short-time high-temperature yield and tensile
strengths of some austenitic and ferritic stainless steels at various temperatures. At temperatures
below about 540° C (1,000° F), the differences are not that large. Above that temperature, the
strength levels drop off rapidly on the ferritic grades. Some special ferritic stainless steels can be
alloyed for increased high-temperature strength.
Application Case History: Vacuum Chambers
Housed at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, the synchrotron, as it is called,
produces electrons that give off light millions of times brighter than the Earth’s sun.
Researchers use the light for various design and manufacturing projects.
Stainless steel, of which S30400, S30403 and S31603 are the most common types,
is used extensively in the vacuum chambers.
Achieving a vacuum requires the removal of as many molecules as possible.
Impurities not only slow the electron beam; they diffract the electrons, much like fog
scatters the beam from a car’s headlights. Some synchrotrons have been made of
copper or aluminum, but stainless steel is more routine from a fabrication point of
view, says Mark de Jong, CLS’s director of operations.
The vacuum chamber components must be cooked in huge bake ovens for as long
as 40 hours at temperatures as high as 250ºC. This removes gases absorbed during
manufacture. Aluminum begins to lose its strength at 150ºC, but stainless steel does
not – a critical attribute considering that the components are baked under vacuum. “Stainless doesn’t lose strength at the
typical pressures of our bake-out,” confirms Mark de Jong.
Ontario, Canada-based Johnsen Ultravac uses S30400 in some of the vacuum chambers it manufacturers. The cost of
S30400 is low, compared with other metals. It is also easy to machine and weld, and sufficiently hard that it can cut into
the copper gaskets. The synchrotron’s many fittings, flanges, ion pumps and valves are always stainless steel, so mating
them to like-metals simplifies the engineering.
A half-kilometre of 203.2 mm stainless pipe, and another half-kilometre of 76.2 mm stainless pipe carry de-ionized
water, which cools the electromagnets and X-ray-absorbing copper blocks in the stainless steel pump cylinders.
S31600 and S31603 were chosen because the de-ionized water would corrode carbon steel.
Photos: Canadian Light Source Inc., Johnsen Ultravac, University of Saskatchewan
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