Abstract
Tailoring the grain boundary network is desired to improve grain boundary-dependent phenomena such as intergranular corrosion. An important grain boundary network descriptor in heavily twinned microstructures is the twin-related domain, a cluster of twin-related grains. We indicate the advantages of using twin-related domains and subsequent statistics to provide new insight into how a grain boundary networks respond to intergranular corrosion in a heavily twinned grain boundary engineered 316L stainless steel. The results highlight that intergranular corrosion is typically arrested inside twin-related domains at coherent twins or low-angle grain boundaries. Isolated scenarios exist, however, where intergranular corrosion propagation persists in the grain boundary network through higher-order twin-related boundaries.
Highlights
Austenitic stainless steels including 304/304L and 316L are critical structural alloys used in a diverse number of engineering applications due to a combination of good mechanical properties, weldability, and overall corrosion resistance
The results indicate that intergranular corrosion (IGC) has a systematically different response at locations at the exterior and interior of a twin-related domains (TRD)
At the exterior of the TRDs, the random grain boundary (GB) network was typically shown to be susceptible to IGC propagation
Summary
Austenitic stainless steels including 304/304L and 316L are critical structural alloys used in a diverse number of engineering applications due to a combination of good mechanical properties, weldability, and overall corrosion resistance. Intergranular corrosion (IGC) in austenitic stainless steels and other alloys can have a devastating effect on many of these industries, including nuclear, naval ship structures, high temperature processing equipment, and off-shore wind turbines. GB sensitization can occur during welding and heat treatment in the 500–800 °C temperature regime and results in the precipitation and growth of deleterious GB Cr-rich carbides and subsequent Cr-depleted zones.[1,2,3] Significant effort has been made to mitigate the deleterious effects of sensitization by introducing a high density of GBs resistant both Cr-rich carbide formation and IGC through grain boundary engineering (GBE).[4,5,6,7,8,9,10] GBE is the process of introducing a specific type and density of GBs through thermomechanical processing (TMP) to improve a GB-dependent property. Previous studies have shown GBE to be a successful method in mitigating intergranular stress corrosion cracking,[11,12] IGC,[5,13,14] hydrogen embrittlement,[15] and grain growth.[16]
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