Influência dos íons brometo e cloreto sobre a resistência à corrosão por pite de diferentes aços inoxidáveis austeníticos e ferríticos.

Abstract

Localized corrosion of stainless steels can be manifested in various forms, such as: pitting, crevice and stress corrosion. These types of corrosion occur due to exposition of metal in aggressive environments such as: chloride and bromide. The mean goal of this work is to study the pitting corrosion resistance of both austenitic and ferritic stainless steels in aggressive environments containing chloride, bromide or their mixtures. The potentiodynamic polarization method was used to test the pitting corrosion resistance in media containing a total of ion concentration of 0,6M. The studied materials in this work were stainless steel: 298 (Cr-Mn steel, specification of ArcelorMittal Inox Brazil) and standardized steels according to the UNS: S30400, S31603, S43000 and S44400. The results have shown that maintaining a constant concentration of 0.6M (NaCl+NaBr) into the electrolyte by varying the NaCl concentration between 0M and 0.45M, the performance in terms of pitting corrosion obeys to the following decreasing order: 444, 316L, 304, 298 and finally 430. In turn, for a concentration of 0.6M NaCl, so without any bromide, there is a variation from the performance of stainless steels, putting the sequence as following: 316L, 444, 304, 298 and 430. Nucleation sites were always found related to non-metallic inclusions in all tested stainless steels for the electrolytes of 0,6M NaCl or 0,6M NaBr. Sometimes, pits nucleation occurred at the matrix/inclusion interface, but others times, pits nucleated in water soluble inclusions. Difference of the pitting corrosion resistance between tested steel in the different electrolytes have been discussed as a function of the chemical composition.