Development of strain in oxides grown in steam tubes

In this study, the foundation is being developed for the numerical simulation of the processes that determine the oxide scale exfoliation behavior of the steam-side surfaces of superheater and reheater tubes in a steam boiler. Initially, the assumptions concerning the base state for calculating oxide strains also were critically examined. The state of stress-strain of an oxide growing on the inside surface of an externally-heated tube was considered for the conditions experienced in a boiler during transition from full- to partial-load operation. Since the rate at which the oxide grows is an important consideration, it was necessary to determine the appropriate temperature to use in the oxidation rate calculations. The existence of a temperature gradient through the tube, and the cyclic nature of the boiler operation (temperature and pressure) were considered; the growth temperature of the oxide was taken to be the oxide surface temperature. It was determined that the commonly-used approach for accounting for geometrical effects when calculating stress-strain development in a growing oxide scale of using the analogy of an infinitely-long flat plate gave sufficiently different results than when using a cylindrical geometry, that the latter was adopted as the preferred calculation procedure. Preliminary calculation of strains developed in multilayered oxides formed on alloy T22 as a function of boiler operating conditions indicated the magnitude of the strains in each layer; the large strain gradients between the layers inferred the importance of the detailed scale morphology in determining the mode of exfoliation.