Multifaceted Behavior and Functional Versatility of Ferritic Stainless Steels, Part I: Applications and Processing, a Review

This comprehensive review scrutinizes the multifaceted realm of ferritic stainless steels (FSSs), highlighting their essential role across diverse industrial sectors. It synthesizes fundamental concepts encompassing manufacturing processes, deformation mechanisms, heat treatment effects, surface modifications, and alloying elements, along with theoretical modeling to analyze the complex relationship of FSS properties. Microstructural control and precipitation kinetics are pivotal for optimizing FSS for demanding environments. Furthermore, theoretical frameworks, including Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Kolmogorov, Arrhenius, and other interrelated theories, address the kinetics and plausible phase transformations in FSS. The novelty of this review lies in providing a comprehensive perspective, containing all aforementioned processing aspects alongside resulting properties in terms of microstructural and textural evolution across interconnected real-world applications. By synthesizing critical concepts from material selection, optimization of production, market considerations, end-user requirements, and future research directions, this review bridges key knowledge gaps in the field. The literature reveals the microstructural and textural evolution, nucleation mechanisms, and enhancement in properties during processing and heat treatments. Ultimately, this work provides a roadmap for guiding the optimization of FSS for advanced, high-performance applications.