Supermartensitic Stainless Steels has been covered in the Stainless Steel World Conference & Expo (Maastricht, the Netherlands, 8 - 10 November 2005), both in the plenary paper sessions and in the workshops. The conference papers for Stainless Steel World 2005 are password protected. If you are interested in buying access, please contact Mr John Butterfield at
j.butterfield@kci-world.com.
Supermartensitic Stainless Steels 2002 Retrospect
Supermartensitic stainless steels have drawn quite some attention in the past five years. Therefore it should not come as a surprise that the second conference solely dedicated to supermartensitics, Supermartensitic Stainless Steels 2002, was well visited. No fewer than 110 delegates from 17 countries attended the event, which was organised by the Belgian Welding Institute and was held in Brussels on 3 and 4 October. The two-day programme encompassed 30 paper presentations and a workshop at the end of the first day.
In the mid 1990s weldable supermartensitic alloys became available mainly for use in the oil and gas industry. At first there were still welding challenges to be coped with and therefore during the first conference three years ago the welding issue was the central point of interest. Today, with the main welding problems belonging to the past and a complete set of welding processes available for the material, other matters attracted most of the attention. With over 600km of pipelines laid the first service experiences have now come available. Consequently, as with all new materials that are used for the first time, the first failures in day-to-day operation occurred.
All in all the general opinion among delegates was that supermartensitic stainless steels are well on the way to becoming a mature and reliable material though. Problems in the production process have been tackled, basic pipeline fabrication aspects have been established and high productivity pipe production methods are being developed that might very well boost the use of the material. At the same time, however, there are challenges that have to be met in order to fully realise the potential of the material. However, the industry, from both the end user and producer side, is succeeding in solving these problems, as the working group on stress corrosion cracking showed.
A pictorial retrospect can be found here.
If you wish to order the Conference Proceedings, please go to the Further information page.
You can download the paper "Past, Present and future of weldable supermartensitic alloys" by Hans van der Winden (Fairwind Materials), Patrick Toussaint (Industeel Belgium) and Lionel Coudreuse (C.R.M.C.) free of charge.
Past, present and future of weldable supermartensitic alloys
H. van der Winden, Fairwind Materials Consultancy
Patrick Toussaint, Industeel Belgium (Arcelor Group)
Lionel Coudreuse, C.R.M.C., France (Arcelor Group)
Abstract: Weldable supermartensitic alloys have been introduced to the oil & gas industry some 5 years ago and have shown considerable development on various aspects. The paper will address the main achievements as well as some issues that require further development work. Special attention will be given to some problems that have occurred recently.