Super and hyper duplex stainless steels: structures, properties and applications

In oil-gas industry, the exploration and development are now targeted to the deep reservoirs with high pressures, high temperatures and extreme corrosive environments. This requires that the materials used should have a good combination of extra high strength and excellent corrosion resistance. In order to meet these challenges, hyper duplex stainless steels have recently been developed. These materials have nitrogen contents up to about 0.5% and PRE-values close to 50, and show both highest corrosion pitting resistance and highest strength among the existing duplex stainless steels. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on hyper duplex stainless steels. It will mainly focus on the material development, microstructures, corrosion properties such as critical pitting corrosion temperature and crevice corrosion resistance, heterogeneous deformation behaviour of duplex stainless steel, and mechanical properties such as tensile properties and fatigue properties. These properties and the ratios of strength/weight will then be compared with those of other type of duplex stainless steels. The potential applications for hyper duplex stainless steels are also discussed.