Controlling grain boundary energy to make austenitic stainless steels resistant to intergranular stress corrosion cracking

Intergranular corrosion and intergranular stress corrosion cracking are the two localized corrosion mechanisms that are of concern to the typical applications of austenitic stainless steels in industries. Until recently, the common understanding was that a higher frequency of random boundaries increases the susceptibility, caused by a sensitization heat treatment or by operating temperatures, of austenitic stainless steels to both intergranular corrosion and intergranular stress corrosion cracking. A recent study demonstrated that extreme randomization of grain boundaries leads to a considerable improvement of resistance to both sensitization and intergranular corrosion. This work is a continuation of Ref. 1 and relates the effects of grain boundary randomization to intergranular stress corrosion cracking: the results show a trend consistent with earlier observations on intergranular corrosion. It is shown that there is improvement in resistance to intergranular stress corrosion cracking with extreme randomization of grain boundaries.