Evaluation Of Corrosion, Hardness For Stainless Steel – 304 In Varied Corrosive Environments

Austenitic stainless steels are materials commonly used in off shore applications owing to their superior quality in terms of corrosion resistance. However it is also cited that there have been evidences in the past with respect to pitting and crevice corrosion under conditions that were not expected. The current work focusses on evaluation of immersion corrosion studies on stainless steels in varied corrosion environments like water, sea water and dilute hydrochloric acids. The immersion duration was for a period of 7 days for all the three diluents. Hardness studies have also been reported in the paper. The result shows that there is a decrease in the corrosion resistance of stainless steel samples with respect to acid corrosion as compared to fresh water and sea water corrosion tests. Hardness of the samples have also shown a reduction in the values for acid corrosion when compared to the counterparts.