Stainless steels are increasingly used for sea water applications. Since stainless steels on the basis of AISI 316 are not sufficient in respect to their resistance against pitting, crevice and stress cracking corrosion higher in Cr and MO containing stainless steels as well as improved NiCrFeMo alloys have been developed in the past decade. In this research work representative stainless steels and nickel alloys of this group were testet in artificial sea water in order to determine their resistance against pitting corrosion the mos serious and important type of corrosion. Potential-current density curves and therefrom the so called 'pitting potentials' were determined. Plots of the pitting potential versus the temperature show that the pitting resistance generally drops strongly in the temperature range of 60 OC. Only few alloys namely those with the highest Cr and MO contents are pitting resistant even at temperatures up to around 100 "C. Les aciers inoxydables s'utilisent de plus en plus dans des applications impliquant de l'eau de mer. Etant donne que les aciers inoxydables conformes a la norme AISI 316 ne sont pas suffisamment allies, au point de vue resistance a la corrosion par piqOre, b la corrosion en fissures et a la corrosion sous tension, des aciers inoxydables a plus grande teneur en Cr et MO ainsi que des alliages NiCrFeMo ont et6 developpes ces dix dernieres an&es. Pour le present travail, des aciers inoxydables et des alliages de nickel ont 6th testes dans de l'eau de mer artificielle pour determiner leur resistance P la corrosion par piq5re, l'un des types de corrosion les plus graves et les plus repandus. Les courbes potentiel-densite de courant et les potentiels de corrosion par piq5re en resultant ont et@ determines. Les diagrammes opposant les potentiels de corrosion par piq^ure a la temperature montrent que la resistance a la corrosion par piqfire baisse en general fortement autour de 60 "C. 11 n'y a que peu d'alliages, et ce sent ceux aux plus grandes teneurs en Cr et MO, qui resistent a la corrosion par piqfire mbme a des temperatures allant jusqu'a 100 OC environ.