Effects of Relative Humidity on Crevice Corrosion Behavior of 304L Stainless-Steel Nuclear Material in a Chloride Environment
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Experimental Setup
3. Results and Discussion
3.1. Surface Morphology Analysis
3.2. EDS and EBSD Analysis
4. Conclusions
- (1)
- When the chloride concentration was 0.1 g/m2, the specimen surfaces had minimum rusted areas at RH = 55% and no cracks were found in the corroded region at all three different levels of relative humidity. It may be that the 0.1 g/m2 chloride concentration was too low to initiate SCC at any tested RH.
- (2)
- When the chloride concentration was 1 g/m2, there was little or no difference for the rusted area under conditions with relative humidity of 45% and 55%, but the rusted area obviously increased when the relative humidity increased to 70%. Additionally, several rust spots and shallow corrosion were observed, but no crack was found in the corroded region with relative humidity of 45%, whereas the distinct SCC cracks were observed with relative humidity of 55% and 70%. This may be explained by a limited chloride transport into the crevice sites at the lowest RH (RH = 45%) with 1 g/m2 chloride concentration. The chloride may need a higher relative humidity environment to transport into the crevice sites due to the low chloride concentration. Thus, this suggests that the threshold relative humidity for SCC initiation of 304L stainless steel with 1 g/m2 chloride concentration at 45 °C is between 45% and 55%.
- (3)
- The type of SCC on the 304L stainless steel at 45 °C was transgranular SCC, which was verified by EBSD results.
Author Contributions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Element | C | Si | S | Cr | Mn | Ni | Fe |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
wt% | 0.017 | 0.450 | 0.029 | 18.000 | 1.540 | 9.000 | Bal. |
Composition | NaCl | MgCl2 | Na2SO4 | CaCl2 | KCl | NaHCO3 | KBr | H3BO3 | SrCl2 | NaF |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
wt% | 58.490 | 26.460 | 9.750 | 2.765 | 1.645 | 0.477 | 0.238 | 0.071 | 0.095 | 0.007 |
wt% | O | S | Cl | Mn | Cr | Ni | Fe |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A | 0.50 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.80 | 19.0 | 7.90 | 70.7 |
B | 44.8 | 0.90 | 0.80 | 0.70 | 16.0 | 5.20 | 31.6 |
C | 25.7 | 1.00 | 0.40 | 1.40 | 30.7 | 4.00 | 36.8 |
D | 9.70 | 0.10 | 0.40 | 1.30 | 17.8 | 6.80 | 63.9 |
E | 36.6 | 1.20 | 0.50 | 0.80 | 31.4 | 5.10 | 24.4 |
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Yeh, C.-P.; Tsai, K.-C.; Huang, J.-Y. Effects of Relative Humidity on Crevice Corrosion Behavior of 304L Stainless-Steel Nuclear Material in a Chloride Environment. Metals 2019, 9, 1185. https://doi.org/10.3390/met9111185
Yeh C-P, Tsai K-C, Huang J-Y. Effects of Relative Humidity on Crevice Corrosion Behavior of 304L Stainless-Steel Nuclear Material in a Chloride Environment. Metals. 2019; 9(11):1185. https://doi.org/10.3390/met9111185
Chicago/Turabian StyleYeh, Chun-Ping, Kun-Chao Tsai, and Jiunn-Yuan Huang. 2019. "Effects of Relative Humidity on Crevice Corrosion Behavior of 304L Stainless-Steel Nuclear Material in a Chloride Environment" Metals 9, no. 11: 1185. https://doi.org/10.3390/met9111185