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Evaluating Sensitized Chromium Steel Alloys with Induction Infrared Thermography

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Abstract

A nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technique is presented that can detect sensitization in welded austenitic stainless steel components for 100% evaluation of in situ parts in real time during production or in service. The sensitization of austenitic stainless steels due to welding or heat treatment has mostly been eliminated by industry standards for manufacturing these alloys that require a carbon content well below the threshold at which sensitization would occur. Such alloys are especially important in naval applications because of their corrosion resistance. However, critical stainless steel components used in naval applications where component failure would be catastrophic are currently not allowed to be fabricated by welding because, until now, there has been no proven, efficient NDE method to verify that each weld in each stainless steel component has not been sensitized and thus weakened. In this study, induction infrared thermography (IIRT) was demonstrated to be an effective NDE tool for detecting sensitized steel in the heat-affected zone (HAZ) of welds in three types of stainless steel plate. The in situ IIRT scan results matched the conventional metallographic analysis of the HAZ in welds in samples of low-carbon 316L austenitic steel, high-carbon 440C martensitic steel, and high-carbon 301 austenitic steel.

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Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and funded by the Office of Naval Research. The authors thank Richard Brown, Chair of the University of Rhode Island Chemical Engineering Department, and his graduate students for preparing the metallurgical samples. Also, many thanks to Matt Roberts, for induction infrared thermography work done during his NREIP internship at NUWCDIVNPT, and to Kevin Wang of the Aerospace and Ocean Engineering Department at Virginia Tech, for his insights on electromagnetic and thermal physics. Finally, thanks to numerous members of the Naval Materials Community of Interest (NMCoI) for fielding questions about thermophysical material properties of chromium carbide precipitates.

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  1. Division Newport, Naval Undersea Warfare Center, 1176 Howell Street, Newport, RI, 02841-1708, USA

    Wayne C. Tucker, Patric Lockhart & Emily Guzas

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  1. Wayne C. Tucker
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  2. Patric Lockhart
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  3. Emily Guzas
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Correspondence to Wayne C. Tucker.

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Tucker, W.C., Lockhart, P. & Guzas, E. Evaluating Sensitized Chromium Steel Alloys with Induction Infrared Thermography. J Nondestruct Eval 38, 42 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10921-019-0581-x

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