Effect of heat treatments on metastable pitting of 316L stainless steel fabricated by selective laser melting

Abstract

Effect of heat treatments on metastable pitting of 316L stainless steel fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) was studied by scanning electron microscopy, potentiodynamic polarization, electrochemical noise (EN) and transient analysis techniques. The results show that the selective laser melted (SLMed) 316L stainless steel was composed of honeycomb cells with different orientations, and a small number of lack-of-fusion (LOF) pores were randomly distributed. After heat treatment, the honeycomb-like cellular structure transformed into austenite structure, and the non-metallic inclusions coarsened and grew. Non-metallic inclusions can be divided into two types according to the composition difference, one was manganese silicate enriched by Mn, Si and O and the other was MnS coexisted with the manganese silicate. The potentiodynamic polarization results show that the pitting potential of SLMed 316L stainless steel decreased after heat treatment. During the EN tests, three kinds of current transient were found, which corresponded to the metastable pitting initiated by the manganese silicate oxide inclusions, MnS coexisted with the manganese silicate and pore defects, respectively. Statistical analysis results of the transient signals show that the heat treatment reduced the nucleation rate of metastable pitting, and increased the transient amplitude, pit radius and pit stability product. The decreased pitting performance after heat treatment can be attributed to the low pit growth resistance.