Heat treatment analysis of SS304 for gas turbine application

With the highly increasing demand of Ni/Cr based austenitic stainless steel grade 304, due to its high corrosion resistance, high ductility, excellent weldability and cost effective material, but low strength and hardness limit its application. The investigation on stainless steel grade 304 was performed for the gas turbine application. As in gas turbine, material must have high corrosion resistance & high strength and hardness. To improve the material properties heat treatment, full annealing process were adopted because of the micro-structural grain refinement occurrence during the process. The annealing process was performed at temperature 1010 degrees C &1120 degrees C and the properties such as hardness and tensile strength were tested with heat treated as well as without heat treated SS304 specimen materials. The test results shows that heat treated specimens have much better property than without heat treated specimen. Most of the properties of heat treated specimens are nearer and some properties are better than the present materials used as gas turbine materials such as IN706 alloy, IN718 alloy, A-286 alloy, RENE95 alloy, which shows applicability of SS304 as gas turbine materials. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.