Elucidating the Effect of Alloying Elements on the Behavior of Austenitic Stainless Steels at Elevated Temperatures

The effect of carbon and molybdenum on elevated temperature behavior of austenitic stainless steels was studied. It was revealed that carbon does not alter the overall grain coarsening behavior but molybdenum significantly retards the growth of grains toward higher temperatures and slower kinetics and effectively increases the grain growth activation energy due to an interaction energy between Mo and grain boundaries. These observations were based on especial activation energy plots, which facilitate the interpretation of results.