Design of wear resistant boron-modified supermartensitic stainless steel by spray forming process

• The boron-modified SM alloy with high wear resistance was proposed.
• Spray forming process leads to continuous borides network in the microstructure.
• The borides network increases at least 10 times the wear resistance of the SM.
• The corrosion resistance of the Boron-modified SM can be improved by increasing Cr content.

In this paper the chemical composition of the supermartensitic stainless (SM) was modified with the addition of small boron contents (0.3, 0.5 and 0.7 wt.%) and processed by spray forming aiming the development of functionalized stainless steel with higher wear resistance. The addition of boron to the SM leads to the formation of continuous network of M2B type borides uniformly distributed in the refined microstructure promoted by the spray forming process. The wear resistance was evaluated by two different methodologies: (1) the standardized dry sand/rubber wheel test (ASTM G65); and (2) a plate-on-cylinder (POC) wear test which was designed to simulate in laboratorial scale the tribosystems found in wear of risers and casings. It was shown that the wear mechanisms that take place in both tests are quite different, but in all cases increasing the boron content is always accompanied by an increase in the wear resistance. Electrochemical analyses were performed to evaluate the corrosion resistance of the designed alloys. It could be seen that corrosion properties similar to the commercial SM can be achieved in the SM modified with 0.7 wt.% of boron if an over content of chromium is added to the chemical composition.