Enhanced Corrosion Resistant Steels for Automotive Applications

Although P/M part producers have been supplying 410 and 316-base stainless steel parts for almost fifty years, P/M versions of these materials have been excluded from many moderate to severe applications due to their marginal corrosion resistance. There have been a number of efforts targeted at improving P/M stainless corrosion properties but performance comparable to the wrought stainless products has not yet been achieved. The work reported here discusses corrosion and mechanical properties obtained for modified steel alloys which have shown significantly better resistance to corrosion in simulated sea water (5% NaCl solution) while maintaining reasonable physical and mechanical properties.