TY - JOUR
T1 - Three-dimensional study of grain boundary engineering effects on intergranular stress corrosion cracking of 316 stainless steel in high temperature water
AU - Liu, Tingguang
AU - Xia, Shuang
AU - Bai, Qin
AU - Zhou, Bangxin
AU - Zhang, Lefu
AU - Lu, Yonghao
AU - Shoji, Tetsuo
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was financially supported by the National Science Foundation of China (No. 51671122 ) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. FRF-TP-16-041A1 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/1
Y1 - 2018/1
N2 - The intergranular cracks and grain boundary (GB) network of a GB-engineered 316 stainless steel after stress corrosion cracking (SCC) test in high temperature high pressure water of reactor environment were investigated by two-dimensional and three-dimensional (3D) characterization in order to expose the mechanism that GB-engineering mitigates intergranular SCC. The 3D microstructure shown that the essential characteristic of the GB-engineered microstructure is formation of many large twin-boundaries as a result of multiple-twinning, which results in the formation of large grain-clusters. The large grain-clusters played a key role to the improvement of intergranular SCC resistance by GB-engineering. The main intergranular cracks propagated in a zigzag along the outer boundaries of these large grain-clusters because all inner boundaries of the grain-clusters were twin-boundaries (∑3) or twin-related boundaries (∑3n) which had much lower susceptibility to SCC than random boundaries. These large grain-clusters had tree-ring-shaped topology structure and very complex morphology. They got tangled so that difficult to be separated during SCC, resulting in some large crack-bridges retained in the crack surface.
AB - The intergranular cracks and grain boundary (GB) network of a GB-engineered 316 stainless steel after stress corrosion cracking (SCC) test in high temperature high pressure water of reactor environment were investigated by two-dimensional and three-dimensional (3D) characterization in order to expose the mechanism that GB-engineering mitigates intergranular SCC. The 3D microstructure shown that the essential characteristic of the GB-engineered microstructure is formation of many large twin-boundaries as a result of multiple-twinning, which results in the formation of large grain-clusters. The large grain-clusters played a key role to the improvement of intergranular SCC resistance by GB-engineering. The main intergranular cracks propagated in a zigzag along the outer boundaries of these large grain-clusters because all inner boundaries of the grain-clusters were twin-boundaries (∑3) or twin-related boundaries (∑3n) which had much lower susceptibility to SCC than random boundaries. These large grain-clusters had tree-ring-shaped topology structure and very complex morphology. They got tangled so that difficult to be separated during SCC, resulting in some large crack-bridges retained in the crack surface.
KW - 316 stainless steel
KW - 3D characterization
KW - Grain boundary engineering
KW - Grain-cluster
KW - Intergranular stress corrosion cracking
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2017.10.004
DO - 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2017.10.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85032301039
SN - 0022-3115
VL - 498
SP - 290
EP - 299
JO - Journal of Nuclear Materials
JF - Journal of Nuclear Materials
ER -