Enhancing Corrosion Resistance and Hardness Properties of Carbon Steel through Modification of Microstructure

Steel has played a primary role as structural and fabricating materials in various industrial applications—including the construction sector. One of the most important properties of steel that required a constant improvement is corrosion resistance specifically in corrosive environment. For this purpose, various approaches have been conducted through different heat treatment parameters to compare its microstructural engineering on chemical and mechanical properties. In this paper, correlation of different microstructure on corrosion resistance and hardness properties have been investigated. Three different heat treatment cycle have been applied on carbon steel with same composition to prepare dual-structure (DS) steel that consisted of ferrite/pearlite and triple-structure (TS) with ferrite/pearlite/bainite and ferrite/bainite/martensite. Phase transformation during heat treatment process was analyzed through in-situ ultra-high temperature confocal microscopy. Effect of corrosion behavior on these steels was investigated by Tafel plot, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), 3D laser scanning confocal microscopy (3DLSCM), and calculation of phase volume fraction by ImageJ. Mechanical test was conducted by Vickers hardness test. It has been found that TS steels that have improvement in corrosion resistance accounted around 5.31% and hardness value for up to 27.34% more than DS steel, because of tertiary phase—bainite/martensite. This corrosion rate was reduced due to decreased numbers of pit growth and lower level of boundary corrosion as bainite/martensite phases emerged.