Review of environmental effects on fatigue crack growth of austenitic stainless steels.

Fatigue and environmentally assisted cracking of piping, pressure vessel cladding, and core components in light water reactors are potential concerns to the nuclear industry and regulatory agencies. The degradation processes include intergranular stress corrosion cracking of austenitic stainless steel (SS) piping in boiling water reactors (BWRs), and propagation of fatigue or stress corrosion cracks (which initiate in sensitized SS cladding) into low-alloy ferritic steels in BWR pressure vessels. Crack growth data for wrought and cast austenitic SSs in simulated BWR water, developed at Argonne National Laboratory under US Nuclear Regulatory Commission sponsorship over the past 10 years, have been compiled into a data base along with similar data obtained from the open literature. The data were analyzed to develop corrosion-fatigue curves for austenitic SSs in aqueous environments corresponding to normal BWR water chemistries, for BWRs that add hydrogen to the feedwater, and for pressurized water reactor primary-system-coolant chemistry. The corrosion-fatigue data and curves in water were compared with the air line in Section XI of the ASME Code