Stress Corrosion Cracking

Introduction/Background:
The effects of residual and applied stresses
environments in service are closely interrelated.

and

corrosive

The more highly stressed (higher energy) regions of a metal will

become anodic and corrosive cells will be set up due to differences in
local stress levels.
Cold worked regions, for example tube or sheet bends and cut edges,
will be corroded in preference to uniform parts of sections in the same
way that grain boundaries are attacked more than grain interiors on the
microscopic scale.
Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) Definition
The combined effects of stress and corrosion can result in a special
type of failure known as Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC).
Metals attacked
This arises under a particular set of circumstances for a given alloy:
specific alloy condition plus specific corrosive media and sufficient local
tensile stress.
Chloride induced cracking of stainless steels; caustic cracking of plain
carbon steels and ammonia damage to copper alloys are typical
examples of this problem.
In the presence of a corrodent, cracks develop and propagate well
below KIc. In fact, the subcritical value of the stress intensity,
designated as KIscc, may be less than 1% of KIc, as the following table
shows:
KIc
KIscc
SCC environment
MN/m3/2
MN/m3/2
13Cr steel
60
3% NaCl
12
18Cr-8Ni
200
42% MgCl2
10
Cu-30Zn
200
NH4OH, pH7
1
Al-3Mg-7Zn
25
Aqueous halides
5
Alloy

Ti-6Al-1V

60

0.6M KCl

20

 The mechanism of SCC is shown as a simple representation in Figure

1.

Figure 1. Schematic view of Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) and corrosion fatigue cracking

When does SCC occur?

Stress corrosion cracking presents an especially difficult problem, since
not only is it highly localised but it can occur in environments that are
merely mildly corrosive to the material.
The damaging concentration of the harmful ions in that environment may
be quite small and difficult to detect and, even in the absence of applied
stress, residual stresses in a structure can often be of a sufficiently high
level to cause SCC and failure in service.
In a given situation the time of exposure needed to cause SCC failure
depends on the stress intensity at any pre-existing or developed crack tip.
The concentration of stress at the tip of a sharp crack or flaw can be
quantified in terms of the Stress Intensity Factor, K1.
It determines the growth rate of SCC cracks for a specific alloy
environment combination.
Catastrophic failure of a component will occur when this factor reaches a
critical value, the Fracture toughness of the material, K1C.
This enables the determination of allowable defect size in design to avoid
failure under given loading conditions.

Below a threshold value of K1, called K1SCC, growth of a crack by SCC is

not expected, but above this value the initial SCC growth rate increases
with increasing K1, called stage 1 cracking, Figure 2.

Figure 2. Growth rate of SCC cracks.

Crack growth
The subcritical nature of propagation may be attributed to the chemical
energy released as the crack propagates. That is,
The crack initiates at KIscc and thereafter propagates at a rate governed by
the slowest process, which most of the time is the rate at which corrosive
ions can diffuse to the crack tip.
As the crack advances so K rises (because crack length appears in the
calculation of stress intensity). Finally it reaches KIc , whereupon fast
fracture ensues and the component fails.