Enhancing the corrosion resistance performance of structural steel via a novel deep cryogenic treatment process

The present study is conducted to enhance the corrosion resistance of the structural steel samples by subjecting them to deep cryogenic treatment process. After the cryogenic treatment, one set of samples is subjected for low temperature tempering process and the remaining samples were used without any modifications. To understand the metallurgical changes of the treated samples, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies were performed. Hardness and tensile strength were also measured. Electrochemical study such as potentiodynamic polarization experiment was carried out to analyze the corrosion resistance of the treated steel samples and comparison was made with the untreated sample. The surface characteristics of all the corroded samples were also characterized using atomic force microscopy (AFM). From the results obtained it was inferred that samples subjected to deep cryogenic corrosion treatment were having enhanced corrosion resistance. Hence, it was concluded that deep cryogenic process can be an industrially viable process for enhancing the structural steel for industrial and infrastructural application.