Electrochemical Characteristics of Sintered Duplex Ferritic-Austenitic Stainless Steels Produced by Powder Metallurgy Process

Abstract

The sintered stainless steel produced by the powder metallurgy process (P/M) has attracted a growing interest because it has the advantage of better formability to fabricate complex shape products without machining and welding. The four sintered stainless steel samples; i.e., the mono-phase SUS304L SS P/M sample (hereafter denoted as 304L), the mono-phase SUS316L SS P/M sample (hereafter denoted as 316L), the duplex-phase SUS316L and SUS434L SS P/M sample (hereafter denoted as 316L+434L), and the duplex-phase SUS316L and SUS434L SS P/M sample with copper (hereafter denoted as 316L+434L+Cu) were used in this experiment, and their corrosion behavior was investigated through the electrochemical procedure. It was confirmed from the potentiodynamic polarization test that their corrosion behavior was clearly classified into two groups. The one is for the mono-phase stainless steel group and the other is for the duplex-phase stainless steel group. Both corrosion current density (Icorr) and passivation current density (Ip) for the latter group were smaller than those for the former group, and especially the duplex-phase 316L + 434L SS sample with copper (316L+434L+Cu) showed the lowest value. This implies that the duplex-phase 316L + 434L SS sample with copper (316L+434L+Cu) has the highest corrosion resistance.