The high temperature oxidation behaviour of austenitic stainless steels

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Abstract
High temperature annealing in a dynamic vacuum has been utilised to induce the growth of duplex oxide over the whole surface of stainless steel specimens. It is found that duplex oxide grows at a rate which does not obey a simple power law. The oxidation kinetics and oxide morphology have also been studied for a series of ternary austenitic alloys which cover a range of composition between 5 and 20% chromium.A model has been developed from the observations to describe the formation of duplex oxide and the subsequent formation of a “healing layer” which virtually causes the oxidation process to stop. This phase tends to form at grain boundaries and a relationship has been derived for the reaction kinetics which relates the reaction rate with grain size of the substrate.