Stainless steel-CNT composite manufactured via electric arc welding

Stainless-steel (SS) matrix composites reinforced by multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) were suc-cessfully prepared by arc welding. A tubular rod was used as additional material. It was filled with a nanostructured flux-cored formed by 304L SS particles and MWCNT chemically treated with H2O2. The Raman spectra of the nanostructured flux-cored revealed an ID/IG rate drop from 1.12 to 0.68 and the amorphous carbon degree diminished from 76.5 % to 17 % after the chemical treatment. EBSD graphs demonstrated that the SS composite had a grain refinement of 64 % induced by the nanotubes in the matrix, acting as nano-structured reinforcement. Compared with the 304L SS fabricated sample, the com-posite increased its microhardness by 45 % (305 +/- 15 HV0.3) and reduced its average erosion rate by 64 % (0.53 +/- 0.07 mg/h). The austenitic c(1 1 1) phase grows up after the vibratory cavitation test. Here, it was observed for the first time that the MWCNT influences the cavitation erosion strength in SS and that it is viable economically for large-scale industry.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).