Effect of small additions of ruthenium on pitting corrosion resistance of LDX2101 duplex stainless steel

Abstract

Four stainless steel alloys with ruthenium compositions of 0·16, 0·24, 0·32 and 0·64 wt-% were produced from pieces cut from commercial LDX2101 duplex stainless steel plate with the manufacturer’s composition of 0·03C–21·5Cr–1·5Ni–0·3Mo–5·0Mn plus pressed ruthenium powder with purity of 99·8%. After solution annealing the samples, the actual chemical composition was analysed using X-ray fluorescence analysis, and then, ASTM A923 (01·03) test method A – sodium hydroxide etch test for classification of etch structures of duplex stainless steel was used to analyse their microstructure. Corrosion potential and pitting potential of these samples were evaluated using a potentiodynamic polarisation technique, and the results were compared to corrosion and pitting potentials of the control alloy LDX2101. The tests for both produced and control alloys were performed in naturally aerated 3·56%NaCl aqueous solution at 25±2°C. The results indicated that small additions of ruthenium significantly improved the pitting potentials of the resulting alloys. The results also indicated that ruthenium additions have no detrimental effect to the microstructure of the resulting alloys. In addition, if such small additions of ruthenium will not improve the general corrosion of the resulting alloy, it will at least not have any detrimental effect on the resulting alloy. Ruthenium will also lower the current required to maintain the passive state of LDX2101 stainless steel. In addition to reduced current to maintain the passivity of LDX2101 stainless steel, ruthenium also increased the passive range of LDX2101 stainless steel.