Quantitative Prediction of Environmentally Assisted Cracking

It has long been recognized that the stress corrosion cracking (SCC) and corrosion fatigue cracking susceptibility of various alloy and environment systems is dependent upon complex interactions between stress, material, and environmental parameters. This complexity can lead to scatter in cracking responses that, in turn, leads to difficulty in predicting the life of engineering structures. F.P. Ford was the 1995 recipient of the W.R. Whitney Award sponsored by NACE International. The present work is taken from his award lecture at CORROSION/95 held in March 1995 in Orlando, Florida. His lecture focused on how these interactions may be predicted quantitatively for ductile alloys in aqueous environments with knowledge of the cracking mechanism. This capability may lead to life prediction of critical structures in, for instance, boiling-water nuclear reactors (BWR).