Austenitic Chrome-Manganese Stainless Steels: Cost effective quality products for wide ranging applications

摘要

Currently two thirds of stainless steels produced globally are austenitic chrome-nickel stainless steels of AISI 300 series. Though chromium is primarily responsible for imparting corrosion resistance, the cost of nickel in recent years has risen to such an extent that it accounts for three fourth of the raw material cost of 18-8 stainless steel. This has prompted greater interest in austenitic chrome-manganese stainless steels of AISI 200 series as evident from their growth during last 5 years (Fig.1). Both series share the same crystallographic structure and exhibit numerous similarities in their behaviour such as high ductility, formability and weld-ability compared to ferritic, martensitic and duplex stainless steels.