Damage Caused by Stress Corrosion Cracking

Stress corrosion cracking is an insidious form of damage that can occur when a susceptible metal is subjected to a tensile stress in a specific environment. To relieve tensile stresses at welded joints, postweld heat treatment can be helpful in reducing the susceptibility of carbon steel fabrications to SCC. When planning to use stainless steels in chloride-containing environments, it is advisable to select alloys that have been specifically developed to resist stress chloride cracking such as ferritic-austenitic (duplex) alloys, low-carbon ferritic alloys, and 6% Mo austenitic alloys or to select high-nickel alloys.