International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 8, Issue 4, April-2017

ISSN 2229-5518

Low Nickel Austenitic Stainless Steel A Review

of its Physical Metallurgy
Prof.Dr.A.Kanni Raj

Abstract The present review elaborately discusses the Physical Metallurgy of Low Nickel Austenitic Stainless Steels.
Costlier nickel is replaced by cheaper manganese and nitrogen. Yield and tensile strengths of high-nitrogen alloys can
exceed those of conventional AISI 200 and 300 series stainless steels by 200-350% without any sacrificial loss in
toughness. A sufficiently high content of austenite-forming elements such as nickel, nitrogen, carbon and copper are
required in the steel to allow the desired austenite structure to form at annealing temperatures, and to persist to room
temperature. In most austenitic stainless steels, the austenite structure is not stable at room temperature, and tends to
transform to martensite when the steel is cold worked; the amount of transformation to martensite upon heavy cold
working should be limited to 10% or less, to avoid excessive wear or cracking of cold-working tools such as dies.
Index Terms Nickel austenitic stainless steel, tensile strength, yield strength, ductility, austenite, martensite.

1 INTRODUCTION

T HE Ni is alloying element traditionally used in stainless

steels to stabilize the face-centered-cubic (FCC) crystal
structure at room temperature. The substitution of Ni by Mn
and N is an interesting proposition, both from an economical
as well as an engineering point of view. Although Mn can be
regarded as an austenite stabilizer, the addition of Mn alone is
not sufficient to stabilize the austenite phase at room
temperature, especially in the presence of Cr which is a strong
ferrite stabilizer. The addition of Mn, nevertheless, is effective
in increasing the solubility of N in the liquid steel and the
fraction of austenite formed during solidification. N is a strong
austenite stabilizer and solid solution strengthener that also
has a positive effect on the pitting corrosion resistance. Unlike
traditional FCC stainless steels, Mn and N alloyed low
stacking fault energy steels exhibit a clear ductile-to-brittle
transition in impact toughness below room temperature [1, 2].
Alloying with nitrogen has several advantages over
alloying with carbon: (i) nitrogen is a more effective solid-
solution strengthener than carbon and also enhances grain size
(Hall-Petch) strengthening; (ii) nitrogen is a strong austenite
stabilizer thereby reducing the amount of nickel required for
stabilization; (iii) nitrogen reduces the tendency to form ferrite
and deformation induced martensites; (iv) nitrogen has
greater solid-solubility than carbon, thus decreasing the
tendency for precipitation at a given level of strengthening;
and (v) nitrogen is beneficial for pitting corrosion resistance.
Yield and tensile strengths of high-nitrogen alloys can exceed
those of conventional AISI 200 and 300 series stainless steels by
200-350% in the annealed condition, without sacrificing
toughness. Cold deformation can produce further increases in
strength resulting in materials with yield strengths above
2GPa [2, 3].
Prof. Dr. A. Kanni Raj is currently working as Professor in Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, PSN College of Engineering and Technology (Autonomous),
Tirunelveli-627152, Tamil Nadu, INDIA, Telephone (91)4634279068, Cell(91)9489692606, Email ncmde17@psncet.ac.in
2 PHYSICAL METALLURGY
2.1 What is Low Nickel Austenitic Stainless Steel
Nickel (Ni) used in AISI 304 is costly and it does not occur
abundantly in our country. Therefore, an obvious way to
produce cheaper austenitic stainless steels is to replace the Ni
with other austenite forming elements. Over two thirds of all
stainless steel manufactured falls within the AISI 300 series,
and of these alloys, Type 304, 316 and their low carbon (L)
grades make up more than 80% of the volume sold. The most
commonly made alloys, 304 and 304L, are metastable
austenitic grades, and are considered general purpose stainless
steels because of their good corrosion resistance, formability
and weldability (304L). However, they are not commonly
considered for use as structural materials except in situations
where their corrosion resistance or toughness is an advantage.
Additionally, AISI 300 series alloys especially 304 and 316
grades have suffered from high production cost due to the
high and volatile price of nickel. Nickel contributes 50% of the
total operating costs in the manufacture of cold-rolled 304 [1].
Elements such as N, Mn and Cu are very small. Low-
nickel austenitic stainless steels (LNiASSs) (Cr- Mn-Ni-N
stainless steels) are a modification of the popular austenitic
stainless steel grade AISI 304 (Table 1). The most successful
development has been the 200-series steels, dating from the
1950s. The 200-series of austenitic stainless steels uses a
combination of Mn and N to replace part of the Ni. These
types of alloys have a higher strength than Type 304; Type 201,
which is the most commonly made of the 200-series, has a
minimum proof stress of 330MPa. The higher strength is due
to the higher nitrogen contents of these steels. Nitrogen is a
strong interstitial solution strengthening element, adding
65MPa to the yield strength for every 0.1% compared to

2MPa for 1% of Cr or Mn. However, apart from the 200-series,

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International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 8, Issue 4, April-2017
ISSN 2229-5518
there are other varities of LNiASS grades have been developed
in last two decades where the nickel content was minimized
upto 0.1 wt% [4-7].
2.2 Why Low Nickel Effect of Cost
The cost of the common stainless steels is substantially
determined by the cost of ingredients. The cost of the
chromium that is the essential "stainless ingredient" is not
high, but additions of elements that improve the corrosion
resistance (especially molybdenum) or that modify the
fabrication properties (especially nickel) add very much to the
cost. Costs for nickel have fluctuated from US$5,000 or
US$6,000 in 2001 to US$15,000 per tonne in 2004. Similarly,
molybdenum has dramatically increased from approximately
US$8,000 per tonne in 2001 to around US$50,000 per tonne in
2004. These costs impact directly on the two most common
grades: 304 (18%Cr, 8%Ni) and 316 (17%Cr, 10%Ni, 2%Mo).
The impact is most keenly felt in grade 316, which has suffered
an increase to its cost premium above 304. Other grades such
as the duplex 2205 (22%Cr, 5%Ni, 3%Mo) and all more highly
alloyed stainless steels are also affected.
Figure 1 Relative cost of few alloying elements.
Relative costs of the ingredients are shown in Figure 1, but
these do vary widely and sometimes rapidly over time.
Therefore, with the recent price increases and the price
volatility of nickel, effect of nitrogen and manganese are ever
more important as an alloying element for a number of
reasons. First, nitrogen is easily available everywhere and thus
is not subject to speculation at the Metal Exchange. Second, in
addition to making stainless steels austenitic, nitrogen can also
make them stronger and more corrosion resistant. It is also a
well and clearly established fact since many years, that
nitrogen in solid solution makes austenitic stainless steels
more wear resistant and more fatigue resistant. Third, Mn
increases the solubility of nitrogen at high temperature and
also acts as an austenite stabilizer [8].
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2.3 Effect of Alloy Addition Mn and Ni
The substitution of Ni by Mn and N is an interesting
proposition, both from an economical as well as an
engineering point of view. Although Mn can be regarded as an
austenite stabilizer, the addition of Mn alone is not sufficient to
stabilize the austenite phase at room temperature, especially in
the presence of Cr which is a strong ferrite stabilizer. The
addition of Mn, nevertheless, is effective in increasing the
solubility of N in the liquid steel and the fraction of austenite
formed during solidification. N is a strong austenite stabilizer
and solid solution strengthener that also has a positive effect
on the pitting corrosion resistance. Unlike traditional stainless
steels, Mn and N alloyed low stacking fault energy steels
exhibit a clear ductile-to-brittle transition in impact toughness
below room temperature. Substitutional elements which
stabilize the ferrite structure (W, Mo, V, Si and Cr) have a mild
positive effect on the yield stress, while austenite stabilizing
elements (Cu, Ni, Co and Mn) have little, or in the case of Ni, a
negative effect on the yield stress of the austenite phase.
Interstitial elements (N, C and B) increase the strength of
austenitic stainless steels more significantly than solid solution
elements, and N has the greatest effect [3, 8-11].
2.4 Nitrogen Solubility in Liquid Fe-based Alloys
The low solubility of nitrogen in liquid Fe, which is only 0.045
wt.% at 1600 C and atmospheric pressure, is a major obstacle
to the production of high-nitrogen steels. However, nitrogen
solubility in liquid Fe-based alloys generally follows Sievert's
law and is proportional to the square root of the N 2 gas
pressure over the melt. At higher pressures and/or nitrogen
levels, there is deviation from Sieverts law and increases in
nitrogen concentrations with pressure occur to a power of less
than 1/2. Additions of Cr and Mn increase, and Ni reduces,
nitrogen solubility. Therefore, the solubility of N in Fe-Cr-Ni
alloys is much lower than in Fe-Cr-Mn alloys with comparable
Cr concentrations. These characteristics of nitrogen solubility
are illustrated in Figure 2. The effect of alloy additions on
nitrogen solubility in iron at 1600C, normalized to the effect
of Cr, are shown in Figure 3. Some of the elements which have
the greatest positive influence on nitrogen solubility in the
liquid, such as Ti, Zr, V, and Nb, also have a strong tendency to
form nitrides. Chromium is not only the most important
alloying element in stainless steels, it also significantly
increases nitrogen solubility in liquid iron alloys with a lesser
tendency, compared to Ti, Zr, V, and Nb, for nitride formation
in the solid-state. Although Ni is an important alloying
element in stainless steels, its negative influence on nitrogen
solubility has led to reductions in its levels in most LNiASSs.
Manganese is used extensively in many low nickel austenitic
stainless steels to increase nitrogen solubility.
2.5 Austenite Formation and Stability
A sufficiently high content of austenite-forming elements such
as nickel, nitrogen, carbon and copper are required in the steel
to allow the desired austenite structure to form at annealing
temperatures, and to persist to room temperature. Expressions
giving the chromium and nickel equivalents for annealing at
1075C are given below:
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ISSN 2229-5518
Creq = Cr + 1.5Mo + 0.48Si
Nieq = Ni + 18N + 30C + 0.33Cu + 0.1Mn-0.01(Mn)2
(2)
Where, the alloy contents are in mass percentages. The
minimum required nickel equivalent to ensure a fully
austenitic structure at 1075C is then given by:
Nieq (required) = 1.2Creq 13
Figure 2 Nitrogen solubility in liquid Fe-based alloys at
1600C as a function of N2 gas pressure.
Figure 3 Effects of various alloying elements on nitrogen
solubility in liquid Fe at 1600C, normalized to the effect of
chromium (interaction coefficient for element divided by Cr
coefficient).
As demonstrated in this document, the numbering for sections
upper case Arabic numerals, then upper case Arabic numerals,
(1) separated by periods. Initial paragraphs after the section title
are not indented. Only the initial, introductory paragraph has
a drop cap. The predicted effect of manganese was tested for a
temperature of 1075C by using equilibrium phase calculations
with FactSage and the steel database [12]. The results are
summarized in Figure 4, which gives the nickel content which
is required to give a fully austenitic structure, for different
manganese contents. The figure confirms the weak austenite
forming ability of manganese (the nickel content required for
(3) austenite formation changes little if manganese is added), and
that the nickel replacement effect of manganese is zero around
10% Mn, and is negative at higher manganese contents. The
strong nickel replacement effect of nitrogen is evident from the
figure, as is the moderate effect of copper.
Copper can be seen (from Equation 2 and Figure 4) to have
roughly one-third the austenite-forming (or "gammagenic")
ability of nickel. Since the price of nickel is historically about
three times that of copper, there is no cost advantage to using
copper instead of nickel to form austenite. Also, the extent of
copper addition has to be limited to avoid surface quality
problems such as hot shortness during rolling [13].
Figure 4 Calculated nickel contents in 17%Cr-0.05%C-0.1%N
stainless steel, and with added Cu and higher N, required to
obtain a fully austenitic structure at 1075C.
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International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 8, Issue 4, April-2017
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Figure 5 Calculated effect of manganese alloying on the
solubility of nitrogen in molten stainless steel containing
17% Cr (and no additional alloying elements other than Mn
and N);results are for the correlations of Montagnon and
Moraux [14], Speidel [3], and FactSage calculations for
1600C.
Evidently manganese alloying additions of 6-10% are not
primarily used to form austenite. Rather, manganese serves to
increase the solubility of nitrogen in liquid and solid steel.
Figure 5 shows the predicted effect of manganese alloying on
the solubility of nitrogen in liquid stainless steel, for two of the
literature correlations and from FactSage predictions. Solid-
state solubility of nitrogen is also an important consideration,
especially the substantial decrease in solubility that occurs
when the steel transforms to ferrite, generally upon
solidification [13].
In most austenitic stainless steels, the austenite structure is
not stable at room temperature, and tends to transform to
martensite when the steel is cold worked; the amount of
transformation to martensite upon heavy cold working should
be limited to 10% or less, to avoid excessive wear or cracking of
cold-working tools such as dies [15]. The tendency to form
martensite can be related to the Md temperature, which is the
temperature at which deformation will result in a defined
martensite content in the steels (so steels which are more
stable have lower Md temperatures). A correlation for the
Md30 temperature (where 50% martensite forms upon
deformation in tension to a true strain of 0.30) is as follows[16]:
Md30(C) = 497462(%C+%N)9.2%Si8.1%Mn
13.7%Cr20%Ni18.5%Mo (4)
Angel [16] fitted this equation to measured Md30
temperatures for a range of austenitic stainless steel
compositions, containing up to 9.1% Mn. Although Equation 4
was developed for steels with lower nitrogen contents than
typically encountered in low-nickel stainless steels, it does give
a general indication of the relative effects of the elements. For
example, the ratio of the coefficients of nitrogen to nickel for
austenite stabilization in Equation 4 (a ratio of 23) is greater
than for austenite formation in Equation 2 (a ratio of 18). This
implies that low-nickel steels which substitute nitrogen for
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nickel, and are sufficiently highly alloyed with nitrogen to
obtain 100% austenite during annealing, should have a smaller
tendency to form martensite during deformation than regular
austenitic Cr-Ni stainless steels. This prediction is supported
by application data [17]. Therefore, the strong austenite
forming effect of nitrogen contributes to the extensive use of
nitrogen in low-nickel stainless steels. Indeed, it appears not to
be possible to produce low nickel austenitic stainless steels
without nitrogen alloying. Nitrogen, as an interstitially
dissolved element, does have a significant strengthening effect
in these steels [3,13], which can be an advantage in some
applications.
2.6 Solid Solution Strengthening
Substitutional elements which stabilize the ferrite structure (W,
Mo, V, Si, and Cr) have a small positive effect on yield strength
(YS), while austenite stabilizing elements (Cu, Co, Mn, and Ni)
have little, or in the case of Ni, a negative effect. Interstitial
elements (N, C, and B) increase the strength of austenitic
stainless steels much more than substitutional elements, and
nitrogen is more effective than any other element. The
powerful strengthening effect of interstitial nitrogen is
illustrated in Figure 6, where YS and UTS are plotted as a
function of increasing nitrogen concentration for a series of Fe-
17Cr-10Mn-5Ni-N alloys. The total contribution of nitrogen to
the flow stress of austenitic stainless steels is made up of two
components, a strongly thermal one, primarily due to solid-
solution strengthening and proportional to N 1/2, and an
athermal component, generally attributed to nitrogen-
enhanced grain size strengthening, which is proportional to N.
The thermal component is weak at temperatures above 200 C,
and very strong at temperatures below ambient. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the total effect of nitrogen on YS is
often observed to be fairly linear at room temperature and
above. Nitrogen also has a significant effect on grain size
hardening, which can be described using the familiar Hall-
Petch equation. The grain size hardening effect (Hall-Petch
slope) increases proportionally to the nitrogen concentration.
This is important since a disadvantage of carbon-alloyed
austenitic stainless steels is their low potential for grain size
hardening [3,18,19].
Figure 6 Strengthening of austenitic stainless steel by
interstitial nitrogen.
2.7 Mechanical Properties Ductility & Cracking
The high strength of these steels at hot-working temperatures
often requires the use of high rolling temperatures to avoid
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ISSN 2229-5518
excessive mill loading. In some cases their inherently low hot-
ductility may lead to edge cracking and other defects. There
are many factors that can affect the hot ductility of steels, such
as: (i) temperature, strain rate, (ii) composition, (iii) grain size,
precipitates, (iv) non-metallic inclusions, and (v) prior thermal
and mechanical treatments. Grain refinement increases the
rate of recrystallization and decreases the recrystallized grain
size [20]. This applies to static recrystallization between rolling
passes and to dynamic recrystallization at the high strains.
Carbides and nitrides taken into solution at soaking
temperatures may, during multi-pass operation, precipitate on
dislocations and in grain boundaries, strengthening the matrix
and reducing the rate of recrystallization. Also the nonmetallic
inclusions have a detrimental effect on the hot-working
behaviour and the non-deformable inclusions have more
serious effects than deformable ones. The presence of second
phase particles in general enhances recrystallization.
According to literature, however, the presence of some ferrite
is highly detrimental to the hot ductility of low nickel
austenitic stainless steels and leads to cracking of the
austenite/ferrite interface [1]. Therfore, LNiASSs still present
several limitations. Edge and surface cracks as well as forging
cracks can appear during hot deformation. These types of
cracks can be generated by secondary phases, segregations,
dynamical recovery, strain induced precipitations, and
technical forming parameters [21]. It has been reported that
the surface and edge cracks of blocks are caused by the
precipitation of carbide/nitride and intermetallic phases. The
precipitation of Cr2N has a detrimental effect on the formation
of these cracks [1].
3 APPLICATIONS
Industrial applications where Low Ni austenitic stainless steels
(LNiASSs) may be utilized include the power-generating
industry, ship building, railways, cryogenic processes,
chemical equipment, pressure vessels, and the petroleum and
nuclear industries. There are several attributes which makes
the use of LNiASSs favorable compared to the more
conventional alloys. Some of these are (i) high yield and tensile
strength and ductility, (ii) high strengthfracture toughness
combination, (iii) high strain hardening potential, (iv)
resistance to deformation induced martensite formation, (v)
low magnetic permeability, and (vi) favorable corrosion
properties (increased pitting corrosion resistance) [1].
A few of the specific applications where LNiASSs are
either being applied or considered for use are: (i) bolt
materials for high-strength and high-temperature applications
in which YS values in excess of 900 MPa are required; (ii)
superconducting magnet housings which require structural
alloys that can withstand the large magnetic forces of
superconducting magnets, have low potential for martensite
formation, high elastic moduli, low thermal and electrical
conductivities, and excellent fracture toughness at cryogenic
temperatures; and (iii) wire ropes, springs, ski edges, and
railroad wheels [18].
At present, the primary commercial application LNiASSs
is for retaining (end) rings which are shrink fitted into position
over each end of the generator rotor to hold the end windings
in-place on electrical generators. The power generator
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retaining rings are required to have high YSs (> 1000 MPa),
adequate ductility, high strain hardening potential, low
magnetic permeability, and favorable stress-corrosion and
pitting resistance. The high strength required for the end rings
is generally achieved by cold forming, which can accelerate
carbide nitride precipitation. Thus, it is necessary to use a
material with the lowest susceptibility to precipitation as
possible [19].
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[16] T.Angel, "Formation of martensite in austenitic stainless
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steels: effects of deformation, temperature, and

composition", J Iron Steel Inst., 177(1954), pp. 165-174.
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