High Si and Al type ultrafine grained weathering steel was created by using the
method of grain refinement and weathering guidance. It was found that this steel showed
excellent properties in strength, toughness and corrosion resistance. The samples were
made by the multi-pass warm rolling between 773K and 873K. The grain size of steel
rolled at 873K was about 1 µm, and the tensile strength and the elongation were 800MPa
and 20%, respectively.
Cyclic wet/dry atmospheric corrosion tests using chloride ions confirmed that the
developed steel exhibited better corrosion resistance than Si-Mn carbon steel (SM). The
Electron Prove Microanalysis (EPMA) and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM)
analyses showed that Si and Al were mainly existed in the inner rust. Si and Al were
identified as Si2+ and Al3+ state in the nano-scale complex oxides of inner rust. The
Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) measurement showed that the corrosion
reaction resistance (Rt) of the developed steel was much larger than that of SM.