In the last years, new approaches for the evaluation of the corrosion resistance of stainless steels were developed which allow short term corrosion testing with increased information content. This work analyses the extensive influence of heat treatment on microstructure and the resulting corrosion resistance of the martensitic stainless steels 1.4034 and 1.4021 with advanced methods. Different heat treatments at various austenitization temperatures up to 1100°C and the effect of different cooling rates were evaluated; the last has not yet been studied in literature at all. The resulting corrosion behaviour in relation to the different carbon content in the two used alloys and the applied heat treatment will be presented and discussed. The applied methods of investigation were conventional evaluation of the critical pitting corrosion potential (PP), modified electrochemical potentiodynamic reactivation (mEPR) and the "KorroPad" (KP) technique. The performance of modified EPR and its interpretation were optimized to provide additional information about the general passivation ability and the extent of chromium depletion as result of applied heat treatment. The aim using PP and KP was the correlation between the Parameters of the mEPR with the changes in the pitting corrosion resistance. Furthermore the results will demonstrate the functionality and usability of the short term corrosion test methods mEPR and KP in order to increase their acceptance within the scientific community. The results indicate a surprisingly large influence of both austenitization temperature and cooling rate on the corrosion resistance within all three used test methods, which can explain the different corrosion behaviour of martensitic stainless steels in earlier investigations.
The novel heat treatment concept, “quenching and partitioning” (Q&P) has been developed for high strength steels with enhanced formability. This heat treatment involves quenching of austenite to a temperature between martensite start and finish, to receive a several amount of retained austenite. During the subsequent annealing treatment, the so called partitioning, the retained austenite is stabilized due to carbon diffusion, which results in enhanced formability and strength regarding strain induced austenite to martensite transformation. In this study a Q&P heat treatment was applied to a Fe-0.45C-0.65Mn-0.34Si-13.95Cr stainless martensite. Thereby the initial quench end temperature and the partitioning time were varied to characterize their influence on microstructural evolution. The microstructural changes were analysed by dilatometer measurements, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, including electron back-scatter diffraction. Compression testing was made to examine the mechanical behaviour. It was found that an increasing partitioning time up to 30 min leads to an enhanced formability without loss in strength due to a higher amount of stabilized retained and reversed austenite as well as precipitation hardening.