The Role of Local Strains from Prior Cold Work on Stress Corrosion

Several studies have recently reported that cold working exacerbates stress corrosion cracking (SCC) of materials in various environments, including those in which they were previously thought to be immune. While these studies usually consider cold work as a homogeneous effect, the presence of grain boundaries results in local strain concentrations that are inhomogeneously distributed within the microstructure. In order to understand the underlying mechanisms by which the local strains generated by cold work influences SCC, α-brass and Alloy 600 were used in this study. The microscopic changes in the local strains caused by cold work and by SCC were measured using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and polychromatic X-ray microdiffraction (PXM). While the plastic strains were qualitatively expressed through the local misorientation calculated from the orientation data measured by both EBSD and PXM, the elastic strains were determined from the Laue patterns measured by PXM. The interaction between the local strains, and the crack initiation and propagation during SCC was studied by comparing the strain distribution from the same area measured before cold work, after cold work, and again after SCC. In this way, apart from obtaining insights on the interaction, the relative importance of pre-existing strain concentrations and those created by crack propagation can be identified. Additionally, statistical analysis of the EBSD data from uncracked and cracked grain boundaries in Alloy 600 showed the susceptibility of the boundaries to increase when they were surrounded by high local strain concentrations and when the grains sharing the boundary had similar deformation tendency, but to be independent of the grain boundary angle. Finally, one of the contributors for the changes in the strain distribution during SCC can be the corrosion process itself which was examined by intermittently measuring the changes in local strains caused by intergranular corrosion on an unstressed sample.Ph.D