A comparative study on twostandardised electrochemicalmethods with emphasis the effectof microstructure and inclusionson pitting corrosion on duplexstainless steel

Duplex stainless steel (DSS) that developed in the 1930’s is a type of steel that consists of bothaustenite and ferrite phases in an almost equal proportion. It inherits properties of both ferriticand austenitic stainless steel and so it has good mechanical and corrosion resistance propertiesthat makes it suitable material in different industries with aggressive environment. There aredifferent approaches that used to evaluate the susceptibility of stainless steels to pitting corrosionlike Pitting Resistance Equivalent Number (PREN) and electrochemical methodologies. In thisstudy, focus is on the potentiodynamic (AL 101 5170) and potentiostatic (ASTM G150) testmethods as laboratory evaluations in which standard DSS (2205) is exposed to the differentchloride concentrations 0.1 M and 1 M respectively. In these methods parameters like PittingPotential (Ep) and Critical Pitting Temperature (CPT) can be measured respectively and used topredict the susceptibility of DSS to pitting corrosion. DSS owes its good corrosion resistance tothe oxide film that protects the metal from corrosion. Pitting can be initiated as a result of anyheterogeneities on the metal surface which act as a passive film defect like non-metallicinclusions and intermetallic precipitations such as sigma phase when metal is exposed toaggressive environment and high temperature. The aim of the present work is to make acomparison between two electrochemical methods besides finding how inclusions andmicrostructure can have impact on their results and on pitting corrosion. The results of theexperiment shows that there is a positive linear relation only in longitudinal direction betweenCPT and Ep. Also, among two test methods only ASTM G150 can detect sigma phase existence(<3%). Based on investigations in this experiment, inclusion characteristics such as numberdensity and composition has compatible results in both methods so that samples with big sizeinclusions (>8 μm) have negative effect on corrosion resistance and in terms of composition,samples with nitride inclusions has lower CPT and Ep compared with those with only oxide oroxide/sulfide inclusions. It is also discovered that phase arrangement is not the same in allspecimens that produced by different production methods and samples with finer phases havehigher CPT values in both longitudinal and transvers directions. However, this shape ofmicrostructure only affect the Ep in longitudinal directions but not transvers