Although stress corrosion cracking (SCC) accounts for just a fraction of all engineering failures, its prevention is a major problem, particularly in the aerospace industry. Recent archaeometallurgical studies show that stress corrosion cracking occurred in ancient metallic artifacts. This article describes investigations that revealed definite evidence for SCC in ancient silver and bronze alloys and a probable case of SCC in low-carat (13K) gold. Diagnostic methods included visual inspection, metallography, and fractography.

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.

A pin used to hold the side plates together in a conveyor chain system fractured and failed, prompting a metallurgical failure analysis. This case study reviews the analytical steps and conclusions from the study of the failed pin.

This article presents the results of a study in which stress corrosion crack growth was examined in situ in aluminum alloy samples. Precracked test specimens were mounted in a customized load frame and a scanning vibrating probe was used to map potential gradients induced by electrochemical coupling current around the crack tip, mouth, and surrounding surfaces. The authors describe the test setup and present and analyze their findings.

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) use a combination of scanning and transmission electron microscopy, atom probe tomography, and focused ion beam milling to analyze corrosion and crack structures in light-water reactor components with near-atomic spatial resolution.