Articles - Kinds of corrosion in stainless steel: cracking corrosion

In this article we briefly analyze stress corrosion cracking in stainless steels Cracking corrosion, commonly defined as SCC (Stress Corrosion Cracking) is another kind of "localized" corrosion, as not being formed on all the surface of the material but just in specific parts of it. As its own name indicates it is originated when the material being subject to tension.

Microscopic yet deep cracks are created due to it, which can lead to rupture of the stainless steel at a tension level lower than its standard one.

Not all the stainless steels are subject to cracking corrosion, but due to susceptibility of the 300 series ones it is a must to know it. It is also important to remark that high temperatures and/or presence of agressive agents such as chloride can be a cause for this kind of corrosion.

To compare the grade of corrosion under tension of different materials it is required to perform a testing of dripping and evaporation. It consists in keeping a piece of the given material at 100ºC while being subdued to a known pressure level, spilling slowly and at the same time a dissolution of sodium chloride over its surface and for 500 hours.

Once the testing is done the appearance of crackings is checked using a microscope, and the process is repeated several times at different tension levels to determine its value producing SCC.

It is worth pointing out that, similarly to what we explained about crevice corrosion, it is not possible to make forecasts about SCC, the results of the testing defined above only allow to compare its grade for diferent materials.



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