International Journal of Engineering Science 105 (2016) 28–37 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Engineering Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijengsci On the connections between plasticity parameters and electrical conductivities for austenitic, ferritic, and semi-austenitic stainless steels Ahmed Kanaan, Aref Mazloum, Igor Sevostianov * Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New Mexico State University Las Cruces, NM 88001, USA a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 10 February 2016 Revised 24 April 2016 Accepted 25 April 2016 Available online 12 May 2016 Keywords: Stainless steel Electrical resistivity Yield Hardening Cross-property connection a b s t r a c t This paper focuses on cross-property connections between plasticity parameters (yield limit and hardening coefficient) and electrical conductivity of stainless steels. Comparative analysis of such connections is done for four materials that differ by their microstructure and chemical content. The possibility of cross-property connection is provided by the fact that both plasticity parameters and electrical conductivity are governed by the same mi- crostructural parameter, which is the dislocations density. The cross-property connections are obtained in explicit analytical form. Experimental observations are in good agreement with theoretical results for three of the considered materials (ferritic and austenitic steels). Behavior of semi-austenitic low carbon steel 17-7 PH, however, is completely different, that can be explained by the specific character of its microstructure. The results can be used for development of a new methodology to estimate mechanical performance of austenitic and ferritic stainless steels with high carbon content. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The present research is motivated by the needs of pipe-line industry, where increasing the pipelines’ life, governed by the development of various defects, is one of the main challenges. The monitoring and control of microstructure changes - formation and development of dislocations, foreign particles, cracks etc. - during working life of the structural elements is still an open problem. The main material used to construct pipelines is stainless steel. Changes in material microstructure depend mostly on pipelines’ installation type. In the case of offshore pipelining, pipelines are affected by corrosion, so the cathode’s protection is usually used to control such corrosion. In the case of onshore pipelining (above-ground), pipelines are subjected to ther- mal fatigue that yields the increase in dislocation density. The latter, in turn, leads to change in the macroscopic residual stresses (Revie, 2015) and increase in the electrical resistivity (Watts, 1988a, 1988b). In the present paper, we provide a comparative analysis of mechanical and electrical behavior of four stainless steels – semi-austenitic stainless steel 17-7 PH, ferritic stainless steels 430 and austenitic stainless steels 302 and 310 - typically used as construction material in pipelines’ industry,. These stainless steels differ from each other by microstructure and chemical content – most importantly the carbon content which governs, in particular, the change in the yield limit during the cyclic plasticity process (Brown, 1977; Seeger, 1958). We also propose, a methodology to control changes in the yield limit and * Corresponding author. E-mail address: igor@nmsu.edu (I. Sevostianov). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijengsci.2016.04.012 0020-7225/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.