Cavitation failure of austenitic and martensitic steels in liquid oxygen

Austenitic steels with unstable austenite at low temperatures have the highest cavitation resistance in liquid oxygen. The cavitation resistance of martensitic (N9, G7) and transition steels (SN2AL) is some-what lower but fairly high, and the cavitation resistance can be increased substantially by tempering in the temperature range at which the reverse martensitic transformation begins. Stabilized austenitic steels (10Kh11N23T3MR, N36, G38) have low cavitation resistance in liquid oxygen.