Exceptional cavitation erosion-corrosion behavior of dual-phase bimodal structure in austenitic stainless steel
By Selvam, Karthikeyan; Saini, Jaskaran; Perumal, Gopinath; Ayyagari, Aditya; Salloom, Riyadh; Mondal, Riya; Mukherjee, Sundeep; Grewal, Harpreet Singh; Arora, Harpreet Singh
Published in Tribology International
2019
Abstract
In this study, we demonstrate a novel pathway to engineer the properties of metallic alloys for limiting their cavitation erosion-corrosion. A facile single-step processing technique was used to develop bimodal grain structure in stainless steel. The bimodal steel was tested in cavitation erosion and erosion-corrosion conditions. In both the cases, bimodal steel showed exceptionally high degradation resistance, nearly 7 times higher compared to as-received steel. The remarkable cavitation erosion resistance demonstrated by bimodal steel is attributed to its high yield strength along with high work-hardening rate. In addition, the bimodal steel showed significantly low corrosion rate of 0.001 mm/year in 3.5 wt % NaCl solution compared to 0.088 mm/year for as-received stainless steel.