It is generally agreed that tensile stress is a necessary condition for stress corrosion cracking (SCC).1 If the SCC mechanism results from hydrogen induced cracking (HIC), it is widely known that hydrogen evolved from cathodic reactions will diffuse to and be enriched in the multiaxial stress region, which is induced by tensile stress. Therefore, tensile stress is the necessary condition for this type of SCC, and it may be deduced that compressive stress would not induce this type of SCC.
If the SCC mechanism results from anodic path dissolution (APD), the function of the stress is to induce slip and film rupture at the crack tip so that the crack can propagate via the anodic dissolution of fresh metal.2 Since compressive stress can also cause slip and film rupture, the anodic dissolution process may occur under compressive stress.
As early as 1944, Scheil3 reported an example of...
