Stress Corrosion Cracking
8.0 The effect of stress
10-7
2219 - T37 2124 - T851 2048 - T851
(6.3% Cu) (4.4% Cu) (3.3% Cu)
Crack Velocity / m/s
10-8
10-9
10-10
-11
10
0 10 20
Stess Intensity / MN m
Figure 5. Effect of Cu-content on crack growth rate.
The effects of alloying additions are not necessarily
consistent from one environment to another. Thus, a higher
molybdenum content improves the resistance of a low alloy
steel to carbonate-bicarbonate cracking, but makes it more
susceptible to caustic cracking.
Changes in the thermomechanical treatment of the alloy can
change the sensitivity to SCC, the mode of fracture and even
the fracture mechanism. To take a specific example,
austenitic stainless steels suffer from SCC in chloride
solutions. In a correctly heat-treated steel the SCC cracks are
transgranular. The mechanism is not fully established;
film-induced cleavage (by way of a de-alloyed layer) is
probably the most likely, although all mechanisms remain
plausible.
If the same alloy is sensitised by a suitable heat treatment,
this depletes the grain boundary regions of chromium as a
result of chromium carbide precipitation, and the SCC crack
path switches to intergranular. The cracking mechanism in
this case may change to active path dissolution, although the
other mechanisms remain possible.
If the same alloy is rolled, a certain amount of strain-induced
martensite will be formed, and this, combined with the
higher strength of the work-hardened material, leads to a
susceptibility to hydrogen embrittlement.
Of necessity stress corrosion cracking requires stress, and it
is often found that there is a threshold stress below which
cracking does not occur (at worst the crack growth rate will
become so low that failure will not occur in realistic times).
For example Figure 6 shows the time to failure of maraging
steel in salt solution. Some care needs to be exercised in the
use of such a threshold stress.
2400
Initial Stress / MPa
1800
30 40
1200
-3/2
Threshold stress
(Did not fail)
600
0
0 10 20 30 40
Time to failure / hours
Figure 6. The effect of initial stress on time to failure of maraging
steel in 3.5% NaCI solution.
Real components will typically contain defects and design
details, such as notches, sharp changes in section, welds,
corrosion pits etc, that will produce a stress concentration,
hence allowing the threshold stress to be exceeded locally
even though the nominal stress may be well below the
threshold. Furthermore, residual stresses produced by welding
or deformation will frequently be close to the yield stress.
The methods of fracture mechanics 7 provide a means of
allowing for defects in the structure. Rather than determining
the time to failure for a specimen exposed to a given stress,
the rate of growth of a pre-existing crack is measured as a
function of the stress intensity factor at the tip of the crack.
7 See “Engineering Materials”, by Ashby and Jones for an excellent introduction to
fracture mechanics.
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