PNNL

Abstract

Corrosion damage can lead to reduced operational lifetimes. Often this damage is not as obvious as general corrosion but takes the form of pits, intergranular corrosion, crevice corrosion and hydrogen absorption. These types of corrosion damage lead to stress corrosion cracking, hydrogen induced cracking and corrosion fatigue. A critical step in defining a corrosion damage function is determining the relationship between the corrosion damage, the resulting crack propagation mechanism and component lifetimes. The sequence of events is often some localized corrosion event such as pitting, transition of the pit to a planar crack, propagation of this short crack, transition of the short crack to long crack conditions and continued propagation through Stage I, II, and III of the long crack SCC regimes. A description of critical corrosion damage processes and examples of the transition to long crack SCC conditions will be discussed.