An earlier investigation by two of the authors1 reported on the effect of cold work on stress-corrosion cracking of uniaxially loaded Type 302 austenitic stainless steel wires exposed to boiling (154 C, 309 F) 42 w/o MgCl2 solution. It was observed that a small amount of cold work (10 percent) deleteriously affected the times-to-failure when compared to laboratory-annealed specimens. Increasing amounts of cold work (20 and 30 percent) significantly improved the times-to-failure above that recorded for 10 percent cold-worked specimens.
Improved resistance of the more highly cold- worked specimens was attributed to the increasing amounts of “quasi-martensite” formed in the metastable alloy by the cold working process. Decreased resistance to stress-corrosion cracking exhibited by the 10 percent cold-worked specimens was associated with the introduction of a maximum amount of localized (tesselated) residual stresses into the material without formation of an appreciable amount of “quasi-martensite.”
In view of these...
