Texture of welded joints of 316L stainless steel, multi-scale orientation analysis of a weld metal deposit

Weld material of type 316L is widely used in stainless steel X weldments in fast breeder reactors. As it is difficult to cut test specimens from an X weldment, the two-phase microstructure of 316L welds was simulated by manua lly filling a mould with longitudinally deposited weld beads. The material consists of gamma columnar grains which form a matrix where F-ferrite dendr ites can be found. The crystallographic texture of the material was investi gated on the basis of a multiscale approach. Neutron diffraction analysis s howed that on a macroscopic scale both phases had predominantly the same fi bre texture with some reinforcements, {1 0 0}(gamma) being parallel to {1 0 0}(delta). Further analysis on an increasingly fine scale were then carrie d out by EBSD and by TEM, showing that the ferrite dendrites were nearly pa rallel to the neighbouring austenite columnar grains (C) 2000 Elsevier Scie nce B.V, All rights reserved.