Plastic deformation and corrosion in austenitic stainless steel: A novel approach through microtexture and infrared spectroscopy

• Deformed led to deterioration of bulk corrosion performance.
• Maximum deterioration in the grade without strain induced martensite formation.
• EBSD and FTIR-imaging enabled direct observation of location dependent Cr2O3 film.
• Strain localization plus martensite sites showed higher intensity of Cr2O3.

The anodic potentiodynamic polarization behaviors of austenitic stainless steels, with varying Cu (copper) and/or Mo (molybdenum) additions, were explored after plane strain compression. Though all the alloys showed developments in deformed microstructures, the presence of Cu + Mo did not result in strain induced martensite formation (SIMF). However, the presence of Cu + Mo revealed the highest degradation in corrosion performance. A combination of microtexture measurements and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)-imaging revealed that the presence of SIMF promoted post-passivation stability or retention of a protective Cr2O3 film.