The Computational Design of W and Co-Containing Creep-Resistant Steels with Barely Coarsening Laves Phase and M23C6 as the Strengthening Precipitates

Generally, Laves phase and M23C6 are regarded as undesirable phases in creep-resistant steels due to their very high-coarsening rates and the resulting depletion of beneficial alloying elements from the matrix. In this study, a computational alloy design approach is presented to develop martensitic steels strengthened by Laves phase and/or M23C6, for which the coarsening rates are tailored such that they are at least one order of magnitude lower than those in existing alloys. Their volume fractions are optimized by tuning the chemical composition in parallel. The composition domain covering 10 alloying elements at realistic levels is searched by a genetic algorithm to explore the full potential of simultaneous maximization of the volume fraction and minimization of the precipitates coarsening rate. The calculations show that Co and W can drastically reduce the coarsening rate of Laves and M23C6 and yield high-volume fractions of precipitates. Mo on the other hand was shown to have a minimal effect on coarsening. The strengthening effects of Laves phase and M23C6 in the newly designed alloys are compared to existing counterparts, showing substantially higher precipitation-strengthening contributions especially after a long service time. New alloys were designed in which both Laves phase and M23C6 precipitates act as strengthening precipitates. Successfully combining MX and M23C6 was found to be impossible.