Corrosion and oxidation resistance properties of titanium-containing low-alloy steel

Abstract

An innovative technique of using conventional low-alloy steel as the prefabricated starting material and pure titanium and aluminium as alloying additions has been employed in this study for obtaining titanium-containing corrosion and oxidation resistant low-alloy steel. Corrosion resistant iron-titanium alloys have also been developed, which may find use in the hardware of phosphoric acid making plants and other equipment. The corrosion and oxidation resistance properties of these alloys have been exhaustively studied using modern electrochemical techniques. Initially the alloying element compatibility range was worked out for titanium in iron, by determining the optimum physicochemical properties of the iron-titanium matrix corresponding to a particular titanium percentage. This value was then extrapolated to the low-alloy steel matrix, assuming the prefabricated low-alloy steel (SAE 8620) to be an impure iron (due to the lower concentration of alloying elements like Mn, Si, P, S, Cr, Ni, Mo, etc.), for obtaining a resistant low-alloy steel. Ti 5%-SAE 8620 low-alloy steel matrix revealed superior resistance to oxidation and corrosion compared to SAE 8620 alloy.