Forta FDX 27 – duplex stainless steel for high strength gasket plate heat exchangers

Outokumpu has developed a new duplex stainless steel with improved formability compared to other duplex grades. The so-called Forta FDX grades allows the utilization of duplex grades in more forming intensive products previously not possible and at the same time benefit from other duplex stainless steel properties for increased application performance. In this paper a Gasket Plate Heat Exchanger (GPHE) plate is formed with the new duplex grade Forta FDX 27 and compared to the baseline grade Supra 316L/4404. Detailed material characterization, strain measurements and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) were performed to further investigate the case. Small differences in measured strain distribution between Forta FDX 27 and Supra 316L/4404 were found after the stamping operation for both material grades and for the same design feature. Strain measurements showed reasonable agreement between measured experimental results and the numerical simulation for Forta FDX 27. Additionally, FEA predicts an improvement of the final strength of the product up to 30 % at the final configuration by using Forta FDX 27 instead of Supra 316L/4404.