State of the Art in Life Assessment for High Temperature Components Using Replication Method

The power generation and chemical industry have been subjected to further material degradation with long term operations and need to predict the remaining service life of components, such as reformer tube and steam turbine rotor, that have operated at elevated temperatures. As a non-destructive technique, replication method with reliable metallurgical life and microstructural soundness assessment has been recognized with strongly useful method until now. Developments of this method have variously accomplished by new quantitative approach, such as carbide analysis, with A-parameter and grain deformation method. An overview of replication, some new techniques for material degradation and life assessment were introduced in this paper. Also, on-site applications and its reasonableness were described. As a result of having analyzed microstructure by replication method, carbide approach was quantitatively useful to life assessment.