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Creep Damage Modeling for Stainless Steel Tube Type 321H using Finite
Element Analysis Package ABAQUS

Conference Paper · December 2017

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Creep Damage Modeling for Stainless Steel Tube Type 321H Using Finite 
Element Analysis  
 
Ahmed Naif Al-Khazrajia, Samir Ali Aminb, Husam Ahmed Al-Warmizyaric
a, b, c
Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq
a
(Dr_ahmed53@yahoo.com), b (alrabiee2002@yahoo.com), c (husamahmed75@yahoo.com)

Abstract:
Parts of equipment in different engineering fields running under elevated
temperature will produce permanent creep strains. Accumulation of such strains will
lead to damage or to unexpected fracture. The prediction of creep behavior for any
steel alloy is vital during material selection stages for such conditions. On the other
hand, performing uniaxial creep tests required very long time in some cases. The
objective of this work is to investigate a developed creep model based on continuum
damage mechanics (CDM) by simulation the uniaxial creep rupture tests using a
commercial finite element analysis package ABAQUS through a user subroutine
UMAT, and standard creep models built-in ABAQUS for austenitic stainless steel
321H alloy. The predicted creep deformations using the simple form of power law
creep equations show less dependent on the sequenced creep stages. While, these
curves are directly related to material constant C4, which scales the curve up and
down, and the slope of the curve is directly related with the exponent of the applied
stress (n). The disadvantage of this simple model is that the accumulation of creep
damage, which should start with the onset of the third part of creep process, cannot be
covered in this analysis. The evolution of creep strain was predicted using the
developed creep model with acceptable degree of accuracy in comparison with the
resulted curves from the experimental creep tests. This agreement is most likely true in
loading conditions during the minimum creep strain rate stage. The existence of
additional amount of creep strain during the tertiary creep stage suggests that the CDM
approach could be more suitable for the applications to estimate the creep life than
using the steady-state of power law formula for creep representation. The analysis also
shows that the CDM approach has an advantage in implementation the numerical
methods easily to simulate the damage evolution.

1. Introduction:
Equipment such as furnaces operated in critical industries, such as oil, gas,
energy, and nuclear industries are subject to types of failures that may cause disasters
at various levels. Furnaces used to heat up hydrocarbons up to a required temperature
for the process, see Fig. (1 a), and can be represented as the heart of the process in
such plants. The engineering components (tubes) of that equipment are experience
1 
 
types of damage as a result of the service under severe conditions of temperature and
pressure according to their design requirements and for long periods of time. Such
equipment usually designed for working life about (100000 hr) on the basis of
standard API-530. On the other hand, the growing demand for energy in various forms
is a driving force to increase the operational conditions, especially temperatures, up to
a critical level to reduce the impact of combustion products and exhausts from
industrial plants such as carbon monoxide and dioxide as an international environment
regulation [1]. Since the effect of increasing the operational temperatures is destructive
to engineering materials, it is necessary to deal with such problem and find solutions
to keep up with these variables. The decision to replace tubes of furnace individually
or totally in early stage of life design as a precaution procedure to eliminate the sudden
failure is not a good idea, because each tube will cost several thousands of dollars. On
the other hand, running the plant beyond the design life without any precautions is also
a risky decision, because a probable failure may happen in tubes suddenly without any
previous warnings and may lead to a catastrophic fire in the plant. Good selection of
materials is one method to deal with such problem, where the selected materials
should have the ability to resist the accumulated damage resulting from the creep in
addition to the corrosion and oxidation resistances at high temperatures [2, 3]. Other
method is the suggestion of new mathematical models with acceptable accuracy to
predict the rupture life providing the possibility of economical replacement for these
parts before a catastrophic failure can happen [4, 5], moreover it maximize the
usefulness of the plants by reducing the unscheduled shutdown caused by service
failure and also eliminating the unnecessary replacements.
Austenitic Stainless Steel is one of the most common steels used at elevated
temperature applications for its good ability to resist corrosion and oxidation, type
AISI 321 is one of this family. To meet the requirements for long-term service of
equipment, such as thermal furnaces and steam boilers, specific elements can be added
such as Titanium, then the designation will be AISI 321H. This alloy has a good
resistance to the accumulated damage caused by creep within specific ranges of
temperatures [6-10].
Adopting any one of the above strategies requires investigation for the
mechanisms of failure due to creep phenomenon associated with exposure to elevated
temperatures usually about 0.4 of melting point. On the other hand, conducting a
practical creep experiments are a time consuming. The simulation of such experiments
or damage accumulating in engineering materials throughout the suggestion of
mathematical models to represent such cases is one of the ideas to overcome the long
time periods of these tests [11-14]. In addition, analysis of such models numerically is
important to have a relabel and accurate model.
Therefore, the aim of this work is to investigate a developed creep model based
on CDM by simulation the uniaxial creep rupture tests using a commercial finite
element analysis package ABAQUS through a user subroutine UMAT, and standard
creep models built-in ABAQUS for austenitic stainless steel 321H alloy.

2 
 
2. Experimental Work:
2.1 Historical Background:
Reformer/Naphtha Hydrotreater plant at Daura Refinery is in operation since
1981. Subsequently, this plant exceeded its design life which is 100000 hr. This plant
has a number of furnaces in its process sequence with different shapes (Box and
cylindrical). There are some examples of cases for mechanical failures lead to a fires
in furnaces as a result to the service life that exceeding the design lifetime, such
examples the fire in 2006 due to tube fracture in furnace F101, see Fig. (1 b), also
another fire happen in 2011 in furnace F102 of the same unit. At 2015, this plant was
scheduled to shut-down for routine check, samples of tubes were extracted from a
Pretreater Reactor Feed Furnace F101.

Fig. (1): a) Typical vertical tube furnace b) Furnaces belong to Reformer unit at
Daura refinery.

2.1 Chemical Composition:

Samples of tube that used in this work were examined for chemical analysis.
The result of this examination was compared with the related alloy designation
according to ASTM standard, see table (1):

Table (1): Chemical Composition for Stainless Steel Tube Samples (%wt).
C P S Si Mn Ni Cr Ti Fe
A-312TP321 H
0.04-0.1 0.045 A 0.03 A 1.0 A 2.0 A 9.0 –12.0 7.0–19.0 H Rem.
(standard)[15]

Tube Sample (test) 0.04 0.033 0.004 0.49 0.61 9.24 15.87 0.29 Rem.
A Maximum
H The Titanium content shall be not less than four times the carbon content and not more than 0.60%.

3 
 
2.2 Creep Rupture Tests:
Accelerated creep rupture tests were performed at previous work (Reference
number 16) under test conditions of two test temperatures (700 and 750oC) and three
uniaxial test loads (120, 130, 140 MPa). Creep curves (creep strain versus time) were
plotted as a result of these tests [16]. A flat dog bone shape specimen with centerline
holes at the two ends was used for creep rupture test experiments. These specimens
were extracted from tubes samples longitudinally, see Fig. (2).

Fig. (2): Preparing the tensile and creep test specimens

(All dimensions are in mm)

3. Creep Constitutive Equations:

A mathematical model based on continuum damage mechanics theory was
developed to account the accumulated creep strains during service life, starting from
the fundamental creep constitutive of Norton-Baily equations. The concept of damage
parameter that suggested by Kachanov and developed by Rabotnov, has been adopted
in this modeling to account the degree of damage at each life step. The final
constitutive equations of creep strain and creep strain rate, accumulated damage as
well as the rupture time equations will be written in terms of material constants, as
shown below. The data of creep rupture tests under different test temperatures and
different load applications that used from our previous work [16] will be utilized to
calculate the material constants.
𝜀 1 𝐶 ℎ 1 𝜎 𝑡 1 ………….….… (1)

𝑡 ………...……………………………….…….. (2)
𝛺 1 𝜔 1 𝐶 ℎ 1 𝜎 𝑡 ….………….…….…. (3)

Where:
ε is the creep strain, t is the rupture time, Ω is the remaining of damage strength, ω
is the damage parameter, σ is the Von-Mises stress, and (C4, C5, n, h, k, m) are
material constants, table (2) shows the values of these constants that will be used in
modeling.

4 
 
 Table (2): Material constants for stainless steel alloy
Material Temp. C4 n k M C5 h m
Stainless 700 Co 2.114x10-19 7.7312 5.782 2.773x10-15 3.262x10-16 6.5 1
Steel 750 Co 1.798x10-25 10.944 6.969 5.807x10-17 6.831x10-18 13.3 1

4. Modeling of Creep by ABAQUS:

In this work, a finite element analysis was performed using developed user
subroutine UMAT running in environment of the commercial software package
ABAQUS to simulate the creep tests prediction and the creep behavior of the
interested material.
ABAQUS offers a finite element analysis environment that will be used to
implement material creep behavior using mathematical relationships that linked the
assembled elements to the whole system through the nodes. The solution for these
relationships will provide the estimated behavior of the continuum system with infinite
degree of freedom or of the discretized model with a finite degree of freedom. UMAT
is the user defined subroutine representing the interface with ABAQUS used to define
any constitutive model that is not available in ABAQUS standard library for materials.
The written subroutine will supply ABAQUS with new Cauchy stress tensor every
increment that updated using the developed constitutive equations, also to supply the
Jacobian Matrix (the partial derivative of stress increment with respect to the strain
increment).
The components of Jacobian Matrix [J], generally for two dimensions of
element in plane stress with different orientation, will be in the following form:
𝟒 𝟏 𝟑 𝟑 𝝂 𝟑
⎡𝒄 𝒔𝟒 𝒄𝟐 𝒔𝟐 𝝂 𝝂𝒄𝟒 𝝂𝒔𝟒 𝒄𝟐 𝒔𝟐 𝟏 𝝂 𝒄𝟑 𝒔 𝒄𝒔𝟑 ⎤
𝟐 𝟐 𝟐 𝟐 𝟐
𝑬 ⎢ 𝟒 ⎥
𝑱 𝟏 𝝂𝟐 ⎢
𝝂𝒄 𝝂𝒔𝟒 𝒄𝟐 𝒔𝟐
𝟑
𝟐
𝝂
𝟐
𝒄𝟒 𝒔𝟒 𝒄𝟐 𝒔𝟐
𝟏
𝟐
𝟑
𝟐
𝝂
𝟑
𝟐
𝟏 𝝂 𝒄𝒔𝟑 𝒄𝟑 𝒔 ⎥ ………………...... (4)
⎢ 𝟑 𝟑 𝟑 𝟑 𝟑 𝟑 𝟏 𝝂 ⎥
⎣ 𝟐 𝟏 𝝂 𝒄 𝒔 𝒄𝒔 𝟐
𝟏 𝝂 𝒄𝒔 𝒄 𝒔
𝟐 ⎦

Where, (c) is 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝜃, (s) is 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃, (E) is the modulus of elasticity, and (𝜈) is
poisons ratio. In case the angle (𝜃) is diminished until the coincident will happen
between the local coordinate system (x-y plane) and the global coordinate system with
principle axes, then the Jacobian matrix for two dimensions in term of principle
coordinate system for isotropic elastic material which will be used to build the user
subroutine UMAT is:
1 𝜈 0
  𝐽 𝜈 1 0 ……………………………………..…………........ (5)
0 0
Creep test specimen was modeled in three dimensions (3D) using ABAQUS
version 6.14 with a configuration same as the actual shape and dimensions of the
specimens that used in the experimental part. Load during this analysis was applied in
axial direction through the upper gripping hole of specimen, while the lower one was
kept in fixed position as illustrated in Fig. (3), this will simulate the actual
experimental creep test. The boundary conditions required during this analysis were
5 
 
set along the edges of this specimen in the longitudinal direction to guarantee that
elongation will happen in axial direction.
Finite element analysis usually requires that the shape of modeled specimen
should be divided to smaller elements, this model was meshed to elements and nodes
which will give accurate results associated with a reasonable time to run the software.
The element type of quadratic element 20-node with reduced integration (C3D20R)
was selected due to its ability to reduce the running time, especially in three
dimensions to analyze time-dependent models under visco-elastic or visco-plastic
deformations such as creep phenomena. Material properties related with the test
temperatures which outcome from tensile and creep rupture tests[17] can be utilized in
this modeling to run the analysis in different test temperatures, this can be done either
to feed the mechanical properties measured under interested specified test temperature
or using the pre-defined filed option in this modeling.

a. Unloaded meshed creep test specimen b. Loaded creep test specimen with its
boundary conditions

c. Moving upper specimen end with load d. Fixed lower specimen end and
application through the pin hole and constraints on two side edges to guarantee
constraints on two side edges to guarantee only only axial movement
axial movement
Fig. (3): Creep test specimen modeled by ABAQUS

6 
 
5. Results and Discussions:
5.1. Standard Creep Law / ABAQUS:
Standard creep equation forms in ABAQUS software package, such as strain
hardening, and time hardening power law for creep curve representation (equation 6 or
7), as a simple form for analysis, can be used for comparison to produce creep strain
versus time plots. The resulted creep curves are illustrated in Fig. (4 a to c).

𝜀 𝐶 𝜎 ………...…………………….……………....……….(6)
𝜀 𝐶 𝑡 ………………….………...……………….……...….(7)

a. Applied Load (120 MPa). b. Applied Load (130 MPa).

c. Applied Load (140 MPa).

Fig. (4): Creep analysis by ABAQUS using Norton power law of creep of stainless
steel type 321H.

The predicted creep deformations in the modeled test specimens show less
dependent on the sequenced creep stages. Only the deformation of the steady-state
stage or the minimum creep strain rate stage is appeared in Fig. (4), and the
deformations of the component due to the primary and tertiary creep stages are
neglected.
The slope of the resulted curves from the finite element analysis by ABAQUS
package represents the average creep strain rate (𝜀 ), as illustrated in Fig. (5) instead

7 
 
of the minimum creep strain rate (𝜀 ). As can be seen from these curves, the
specifications of the resulted curves are directly related to material constant C4 in
Norton equation which scales the curve up and down, while the slope of the curve is
directly related with the exponent of the applied stress (n). In general, it can be seen
that the outcomes of the curves from this analysis show a good agreement with the
experimental creep tests results, when average creep strain rate is drawn on
experimental creep curves, Fig. (5). The disadvantage of this simple model is that the
accumulation of creep damage, which should start with the onset of the third part of
creep process, cannot be covered in this analysis.

Fig. (5): Comparisons between the creep experiments and creep analyzed by ABAQUS at test
conditions for stainless steel material: stress = 120 MPa and temperature = 700oC

5.2 Modified Creep Constitutive Equations

These equations contain internal variables representing damage accumulation,
equations (1), (2), and (3). Figure (6) was plotted using the recorded data from the
software analysis, and these plots function to make a comparison between creep
curves from the experimental and the simulated data by ABAQUS/UMAT software.
In general, the evolution of creep strain was predicted using the developed
model with acceptable degree of accuracy for stainless steel material in comparison
with the resulted curves from the experimental creep tests. This agreement is most
likely true in loading conditions during the minimum creep strain rate stage (second
stage of creep).
The existence of additional amount of creep strain during the tertiary creep
stage suggests that the continuum damage mechanics approach could be more suitable
for the applications to estimate the creep life than using the steady-state of power law
formula for creep representation. The analysis also shows that the continuum damage
mechanics approach has an advantage in implementation the numerical methods easily
to simulate the damage evolution.

8 
 
 The deterioration process in material due to creep phenomena reduces the load
carrying capacity that sustains the applied stress as a result of creep cavities
formations at the grain boundaries and the coalescences among them. It is found that
this process can be counted using the continuum damage mechanics approach. There
is a limitation in the degree of accuracy for the prediction of tube working life based
on uniaxial creep or creep rupture tests, this limitation occurs because the damage due
to creep accumulates in the tube material under the action of multiaxial stress
application.

a. 𝝈 120 MPa & 𝑻 700oC. b. 𝝈 120 MPa & 𝑻 750oC.

c. 𝝈 130 MPa & 𝑻 700oC. d. 𝝈 130 MPa & 𝑻 750oC.

e. 𝝈 140 MPa & 𝑻 700oC. f. 𝝈 140 MPa & 𝑻 750oC.

Fig. (6): Comparisons between the creep experiments and creep analyzed by
ABAQUS using the developed constitutive equations through subroutine UMAT. 
9 
 
6. Conclusions and Future Work:
It is concluded from this work that creep strength can be predicted using the
developed creep constitutive equations with acceptable degree of accuracy. The
standard creep models built-in ABAQUS package, such as strain hardening, and time
hardening power law can give less prediction for the total creep strain. The predicted
creep curve is less dependent on the sequenced creep stages.
The developed creep model that analyzed by ABAQUS package using user
subroutine UMAT can be used with a high degree of accuracy to predict creep curves
of stainless steel material type 321H under different creep conditions.
For future work, the material constants that used in the developed model can be
found for different steel alloys which can allow using the developed creep model
efficiently.

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