Delayed Cracking of Metastable Austenitic Stainless Steels after Deep Drawing

Certain metastable austenitic stainless steels, especially low-nickel grades, can be susceptible to delayed cracking after forming operations. Small amount of hydrogen is always present in stainless steels as an inevitable impurity. Delayed cracking results from a time-dependent hydrogen redistribution process driven by stress, either applied or residual. In this study, delayed cracking susceptibility of three metastable austenitic stainless...