Austenitic stainless steels are, by far, the most widely used stainless steels comprising 70-80 % of stainless production. With excellent corrosion and mechanical properties at high temperatures, they are choice materials for powerplant tubes which have to operate at temperatures above 950 K, or for aeroengines. The important role of precipitation in the achievement of good creep properties has been understood for long and extensively studied. Although some phases are now well documented, there are still contradictions and missing thermodynamic data, in particular, there is only a limited amount of informations about phases like Z-phase or Cr3Ni2SiN which can be predominant precipitates in nitrogen bearing steels. This paper is a review of common precipitates in austenitic stainless steels, in particular wrought heat-resistant steels of the AISI 300 families or 20/25 steels. Precipitates forming in age-hardening austenitic stainless steels are only briefly presented, having been previously reviewed by other authors.
Materials Science and Technology, Vol. 17, 2001, pp. 1-14.
Thomas Sourmail receiving the Institute of Materials 2001 Award, from Professor Colin Humphreys, for the Literature Survey Competition which resulted in this paper.
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