Grain boundary engineering of austenitic stainless steels through plastic strain and thermal annealing can be used to develop microstructures with improved resistance to intergranular stress corrosion cracking. The effect of thermal annealing on shot peened Type 304 stainless steel has been examined using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The objective was to evaluate the potential for surface property control by grain boundary engineering. The near-surface microstructures obtained by annealing were compared with microstructures obtained by bulk processing, to evaluate their potential corrosion and stress corrosion resistance.
