Effect of plastic deformation and H₂S on dynamic fracture toughness of high strength casing steel

Abstract

The effects of plastic deformation and H₂S on fracture toughness of high strength casing steel (C110 steel) were investigated. The studied casing specimens are as follows: original casing, plastic deformation (PD) casing and PD casing after being immersed in NACE A solution saturated with H₂S (PD+H₂S). Instrumented impact method was employed to evaluate the impact behaviors of the specimens, meanwhile, dynamic fracture toughness (JId) was calculated by using Rice model and Schindler model. The experimental results show that dynamic fracture toughness of the casing decreases after plastic deformation. Compared with that of the original casing and PD casing, the dynamic fracture toughness decreases further when the PD casing immersed in H₂S, moreover, there are ridge-shaped feature and many secondary cracks present on the fracture surface of the specimens. Impact fracture mechanism of the casing is proposed as follows: the plastic deformation results in the increase of defect density of materials where the atomic hydrogen can accumulate in reversible or irreversible traps and even recombine to form molecular hydrogen, subsequently, the casing material toughness decreases greatly.

Keywords

sour gas fields / high strength casing / C110 steel / plastic deformation / H₂S / fracture toughness

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