Abstract

Precipitation-hardened stainless steels are important structural materials in a variety of industrial applications in aircraft, chemical and power plants. These steels have a combination of good mechanical properties, corrosion resistance and simple fabrication process. Precipitation reaction in a PH 17-4 stainless steel which contains approximately 3 wt.% of Cu begins with formation of coherent copper-rich precipitate, which subsequently transform to incoherent fee Cu by further aging. By prolonged aging at 400 °C, embrittlement occurs as hardening progresses. Both the coarsening of Cu and the decomposition of the martensite matrix could be the reasons for this embrittlement. Thus, this study attempted to clarify the phase separation and the precipitation processes in a PH 17-4 stainless steel on prolonged aging by atom probe field ion microscopy (APFIM), in order to understand the mechanism of the degradation of mechanical properties by long term medium temperature aging.

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