Martensitic stainless steels are among the most widely used materials in applications where wear resistance and corrosion resistance are critical, such as the food, pharmaceutical, chemical or petroleum industries. The microstructure, proportion of chromium carbides and mechanical properties of martensitic stainless steels are influenced by the alloy composition and the heat treatment parameters: austenitization temperature, cooling rate, deep cryogenic treatment and tempering temperature and time. The control of the cycle of heat treatments is essential to improve the behaviour of the material in service.

The main objective of this study was to investigate the influence of hardening and fragility on microstructure and mechanical properties of martensitic stainless steel X46Cr13 (AISI 420; DIN EN 1.4034).

Microstructural characterisation and carbide distribution studies were contributed for each heat treatment condition using by optical microscopy, SEM with EDAX facility, and XRD tests to measure the percentage of retained austenite. The mechanical properties were evaluated with tensile and hardness tests.

References

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[2] A.Neves de Moura; Effect of austenitization temperature on microstructure, crystallographic aspects, and mechanical properties of AISI 420 martensitic stainless steel ; Materials Science & Engineering A 909 (2024) 146835

[3] S.Dieck; Improvement of the martensitic stainless steel X46Cr13 by Q&P heat treatmen; IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 882 (2020) 012006

[4] Bijan Abbasi-Khazaei; Rapid Tempering of Martensitic Stainless Steel AISI420: Microstructure, Mechanical and Corrosion Properties; JMEPEG (2017) 26:1626–1633