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The corrosion resistance of martensitic stainless steels (MSS) depends strongly on the chemical composition and the applied heat treatment. Both determines the distribution of the alloying elements in the microstructure and the resulting material properties. The addition of nitrogen is known to be beneficial for the pitting corrosion resistance of stainless steels. In case of MSS this effect is not only connected to nitrogen itself because nitrogen can be used to substitute carbon which also influences the result of the heat treatment process. This paper shows the effect of nitrogen on the corrosion resistance in relation to the hardening process of MSS. Therefore the effects of austenitization duration, austenitization temperature and cooling rate on microstructure, hardness and corrosion resistance were studied on the MSS X30CrMoN15 1 and X50CrMoV15. The effect of different cooling rates was studied in the range of > 100 K/s down to 1 K/s using the jominy end quench test. The changes in corrosion resistance were detected with electrochemical potentiodynamic reactivation (EPR) and by the determination of critical pitting potentials. Besides this experimental approach thermodynamic calculations with the software thermocalc will be presented and used for the interpretation of the effect of nitrogen on the corrosion resistance of MSS.
Hardness and pitting corrosion resistance are the major quality criteria of cutlery. Both are achieved by the heat treatment (austenitization, quenching and tempering) of the normally used martensitic stainless steels. The established quality control method regarding the pitting corrosion resistance is an alternating immersion test in 1 % NaCl solution at 60 °C according to DIN EN ISO 8442. This standard test shows a high deviation, which limits any optimization of the heat treatment process. New approaches for corrosion testing of martensitic stainless-steels were developed and used in the last years to connect the weak pitting corrosion resistance of martensitic stainless-steels with the phenomenon of chromium depletion. The tempering temperatures used in the industrial heat treatment of cutlery are too low to explain the appearance of chromium depletion. For this reason, a systematic investigation of three heat treatment parameters (austenitization time, cooling speed and tempering temperature) were performed on the martensitic stainless-steels X50CrMoV15 (1.4116) to detect their contribution to chromium depletion. The electrochemical potentiodynamic reactivation (EPR), which is very sensitive to any change of the microstructure, was used to quantify the degree of chromium depletion. The KorroPad indicator-test was applied to correlate low pitting corrosion resistance to the presence of chromium depletion. The results of all investigations allow conclusions about the very small process window, which is necessary to achieve cutlery with high pitting corrosion resistance.