A review on pitting corrosion and environmentally assisted cracking on duplex stainless steel

Duplex stainless steel is widely used in the petrochemical, maritime, and food industries. However, duplex stainless steel has the problem of corrosion failures during use. This topic has not been comprehensively and academically reviewed. These factors motivate the authors to review the developments in the corrosion research of duplex stainless steel. The review found that the primary reasons for the failure of duplex stainless steels are pitting corrosion and chloride-induced stress corrosion cracking. After being submerged in water, the evolution of the passive film on the duplex stainless steel can be loosely classified into three stages: nucleation, rapid growth, and stable growth stages. Instead of dramatic rupture, the passive film rupture process is a continuous metal oxidation process. Environmental factors scarcely affect the double-layer structure of the passive film, but they affect the film's overall thickness, oxide ratio, and defect concentration. The six mechanisms of alloying elements on pitting corrosion are summarized as stabilization, ineffective, soluble precipitates, soluble inclusions, insoluble inclusions, and wrapping mechanisms. In environments containing chlorides, ferrite undergoes pitting corrosion more easily than austenite. However, the pitting corrosion resistance reverses when sufficiently large deformation is used. The mechanisms of pitting corrosion induced by precipitates include the Cr-depletion, microgalvanic, and high-stress field theories. Chloride-induced cracks always initiate in the corrosion pits and blunt when encountering austenite. Phase boundaries are both strong hydrogen traps and rapid hydrogen diffusion pathways during hydrogen-induced stress cracking.