Contraction of high strength Invar steel during creep test

Modern large size Cathode Ray Tubes are equipped with so called “true flat” shadowmasks made of Invar steel. The mask is stretched onto a solid frame and both are submitted to a final heat treatment (blackening treatment). Elevated temperatures and pretension make the mask material prone to creep, resulting in disutility of the unit for the application. In order to reduce creep elongation of the mask material to a minimum, Mo added high strength Invar steels have been considered to provide the required specifications. Depending on prior processing this type of Invar steel shows an inexplicable contraction during the creep test. Even though this effect can be perfectly used to fulfil the creep requirements, the mechanisms involved were not understood. Focus of the present work was the examination of the effect of precipitations on the “negative creep” behaviour of the investigated Invar steel using carbon extraction replicae, transmission electron microscopy as well as SAED. Information about the chemical composition, morphology, size and number of the precipitations in the different states could be gained. The observations revealed that during the creep test, depending on the prior annealing temperature, the chemical composition of the precipitates changed. The Nb content decreased while simultaneously the Mo content increased. Due to the volume difference caused by Mo in solid solution and in precipitated form respectively, the precipitation of Mo during the creep test is supposed to cause the observed sample contraction. The results can be confirmed by calculating the effect of Mo on the distortion of the FeNi lattice.