Cover Picture: Materials and Corrosion. 2/2015

Abstract

Cover:Grain boundary engineering of metastable 204Cu, 301, and 301LN austenitic stainless steels was studied. Thermomechanical processing parameters were obtained for each of the tested steel grades by varying cold rolling reduction and annealing temperature, and by analysing the acquired grain boundary character distributions in SEM with EBSD. A high fraction of about 80 % low‐Σ CSL boundaries was attained in all of the tested steels. Effect of the GBE‐treatments on sensitization and intergranular corrosion properties was studied with Streicher and DL‐EPR tests. GBE‐treating was found to beneficially decrease the rate of intergranular corrosion and sensitization in 204Cu and 301 steels, but in low‐carbon 301LN steel no improvement was observed. The cover photo shows highly twinned microstructure in a GBE‐treated 204Cu austenitic stainless steel. Twin boundaries and other low‐Σ CSL boundaries (Σ ≤ 29) are presented with red and random boundaries with black.More information can be found in: A. Forsström, J. Talonen, T. Saukkonen, H. Hänninen, Grain boundary engineering of metastable 204Cu, 301, and 301LN austenitic stainless steels to improve their sensitization resistance, Materials and Corrosion, 2015, 66, 95.