Effects of Inner Defects on Creep Damage and Crack Initiation for a Brazed Joint

Abstract

In the brazing process, some brazing defects like semicircular or straight type are generated due to incomplete filling. In this paper, the creep damage and creep crack initiation (CCI) time of Hastelloy C276-BNi2 brazed joint with defects are investigated by a ductility exhaustion damage model. The effects of defect dimension and filler metal thickness are also discussed. The results show that the different defects have different creep damage distributions and CCI times. The maximum creep damage is located at the defect frontier due to the larger stress concentration. With the increase of semicircular defect radius and straight defect length, the CCI time decreases. The creep fracture is inclined to generate in semicircular defect for the smaller defect area ratio, while it is easy to generate in straight defect for the bigger defect area ratio. As the filler metal thickness increases, the CCI time increases. For the thicker filler metal, the creep crack is easy to initiate in semicircular defect.

Keywords

• brazed joint
• creep damage
• crack initiation
• defect
• finite element