Effect of ultrasonic impact peening on the corrosion of ferritic-martensitic steels in supercritical water

Ferritic-Martensitic (F/M) steels are important candidate alloys to be used in the next generation (Generation-IV) SCWRs. In this work, two F/M steels with the same Cr content of around 12 wt.% and varied Si content from 0.6 wt.% to 2.2 wt.% were evaluated in supercritical water (SCW) at 500 °C and 25 MPa for up to 1000 h. The effect of ultrasonic shot peening on the oxidation behavior of these F/M steels have been investigated. The results showed that the oxidation was affected by the Si content as well as the surface modification. The F/M steel with low Si concentration exhibited higher corrosion resistance than that of the alloy with high Si content. Shot peening, which could modify the microstructure at the surface, showed significantly beneficial effect to improving the oxidation resistance. A thin, uniform oxide layer formed on the peened sample could be attributed to the enhanced diffusion of Cr induced by the surface modification.