Corrosion tests of stainless steels in automotive applications

A part of the purpose with this thesis is to show the automotive industry that stainless steel is an attractive material to the next generation vehicles. Corrosion resistance of steel grades were screened and an attempt to measure coatings performance on stainless steels were carried out. This was made by testing has the corrosion resistance of three different steel grades, HyTens X, HyTens 1000 and LDX 2101, in different test procedures. Standard methods like anodic polarization curves, potentiostatic crevice corrosion resistance, stress corrosion cracking resistance in MgCl2 and CaCl2, and intergranular corrosion resistance were used as well as development of a new method to rank pitting corrosion resistance of low-allowed stainless steels. Regarding stress corrosion resistance LDX 2101 was superior to HyTens X and HyTens 1000. However, inducing crevice corrosion the HyTens X and HyTens 1000 performed better than LDX 2101. An investigation of the adhesiveness and degradation of oxsilan coatings on stainless steel compared to conventional ED-coatings (electrodeposit) steels was also made. Results showed that the adhesiveness of the oxsilan coatings was as good or even better as the ED-coating.Validerat; 20101217 (root