Towards a reliable determination of the intergranular corrosion rate of austenitic stainless steel in oxidizing media

Abstract This paper studies the corrosion behaviour of non-sensitized stainless steels in oxidizing environments, where they can suffer intergranular corrosion. In this case, corrosion rate estimated by gravimetric measurement is not constant as a function of time. This paper proposes a quantitative modelling of the IGC kinetics. Two models were developed: the first one is based on the geometrical simulation of the groove penetration; the second one uses a semi-empirical approach based on the typical shape of the corrosion kinetics. Both models reproduce successfully the experimental corrosion kinetics observed for a AISI 310L stainless steel corroded in nitric acid containing oxidizing ions.