The influence of grain size on the corrosion resistance of nanocrystalline zirconium metal

In this paper, a computation model of corrosion rate versus grain size of nanocrystalline zirconium at high temperature has been presented. By this model, the corrosion rate and weight gain of zirconium metal under different temperature were calculated. The results show that the corrosion resistance of nanocrystalline zirconium is much superior to that of zirconium with coarse grain size. The corrosion rate constant and weight gain of nanocrystalline zirconium decrease with the decrease of grain size. So the refinement of grain size can remarkably improve the corrosion resistance of zirconium metal.