The 2.25Cr-1Mo steels are widely used in boilers currently in operation in thermal generation plants in Brazil, and can present a microstructure consisting of ferrite-pearlite or ferrite-bainite. Subjected to creep in operation, the material properties of this steel degrade due to typical microstructural changes such as the coalescence of the carbides originally present in the material. In this case, these microstructural changes reduce the mechanical strength of the material. Since strain increases with microstructural degradation and strain depends on the stress, temperature and time, the extent of microstructural degradation can be used as a damage measurement method. Thus, it is important to know the microstructural changes in the material to provide technical support for residual life prediction of components. The degradation of the ferritic-pearlitic steels is well known, but the literature does not present consistent results regarding the ferritic-bainitic steels. This is a comparative study of the microstructural evolution at temperatures between 550 and 600°C to 2,000 h of pearlitic and bainitic 2.25 Cr-1Mo steels. The results showed that the ferritic-bainitic steel is more stable than the ferritic-pearlitic. However, the bainitic structure does not present the same stages of degradation identified by Toft and Marsden to classify the pearlitic steels.
microstructural degradation; aging; high temperature materials; bainite
