Stress effects corrosion testing

Even with effective corrosion test programs, many unexpected failures occur in chemical processes. There are several reasons. The corrosion behavior of a material is a combination of the property of the metal (composition and condition) and of the environment. Corrosion can take many forms, from general to localized. An acceptable rate of general corrosion may not translate into successful performance if there is also localized corrosion, such as pitting or stress corrosion cracking. There is no universal corrosion test for all situations, and sometimes a combination of corrosion test techniques may be required to raise one s level of confidence. 

The condition of the test metal is important. Clean metal samples with uniform finishes are preferred. The accelerating effects of surface defects lead to deceptive results in samples. The ratio of the area of a defect to the total surface area of the metal is much higlier in a sample than in any metal in service. This is an indication of the inaccuracy of tests made on metals with improper finishes. The sample metal should have the same type of heat treatment as the metal to be used in service. Different heat treatments have different effects on corrosion. Heat treatment may improve or reduce the corrosion resistance of a metal in an unpredictable manner. For the purpose of selectivity, a metal stress corrosion test may be performed. General trends of the performance of a material can be obtained from such tests however, it is difficult to reproduce the stress that actually will occur during service. 

It is hardly surprising that the preparation of surfaces of plain specimens for stress-corrosion tests can sometimes exert a marked influence upon results. Heat treatments carried out on specimens after their preparation is otherwise completed can produce barely perceptible changes in surface composition, e.g. decarburisation of steels or dezincification of brasses, that promote quite dramatic changes in stress-corrosion resistance. Similarly, oxide films, especially if formed at high temperatures during heat treatment or working, may influence results, especially through their effects upon the corrosion potential. 

It may be felt that the initiation of a stress-corrosion test involves no more than bringing the environment into contact with the specimen in which a stress is generated, but the order in which these steps are carried out may influence the results obtained, as may certain other actions at the start of the test. Thus, in outdoor exposure tests the time of the year at which the test is initiated can have a marked effect upon the time to failure as can the orientation of the specimen, i.e. according to whether the tension surface in bend specimens is horizontal upwards or downwards or at some other angle. But even in laboratory tests, the time at which the stress is applied in relation to the time at which the specimen is exposed to the environment may influence results. Figure 8.100 shows the effects of exposure for 3 h at the applied stress before the solution was introduced to the cell, upon the failure of a magnesium alloy immersed in a chromate-chloride solution. Clearly such prior creep extends the lifetime of specimens and raises the threshold stress very considerably and since other metals are known to be strain-rate sensitive in their cracking response, it is likely that the type of result apparent in Fig. 8.100 is more widely applicable. 

Environmental Cracking The problem of environmental cracking of metals and their alloys is very important. Of all the failure mechanism tests, the test for stress corrosion cracking (SCC) is the most illusive. Stress corrosion is the acceleration of the rate of corrosion damage by static stress. SCC, the limiting case, is the spontaneous cracking that may result from combined effects of stress and corrosion. It is important to differentiate clearly between stress corrosion cracking and stress accelerated corrosion. Stress corro-... 

Corrosion tests have inevitable limitations in their capacities to mimic actual service conditions of equipment. Standard, ambient pressure, immersion test procedures, with intermittent fluid refreshment, are available for both metallic and nonmetallic materials, but are limited to the ambient pressure boiling point of the fluid, and provide limited scope to simulate the effects of stress, geometry, heat transfer, and fluid flow. Such fesf procedures can be conducted at plant pressures and temperatures in autoclaves, and can be upgraded to focus on specific factors such as fluid flow and heat transfer. Even so a laboratory test, however elaborate, is a poor substitute for a test in the plant itself. 

A typical rack employed for installation of specimens in pilot plants is shown in Fig. 6. Both corrosion coupons, 2 X 1 X 0.35 in. thick, and bend specimens intended to determine stress-corrosion cracking susceptibility, are included in the installation for aqueous corrosion testing. Specimens are separated by high density alumina spacers to eliminate electrochemical effects. During exposure, the racks are welded to existing components in the pilot plant equipment. 

More sophisticated, multisensor test chips contain test structures for the evaluation of thermal resistance, electrical performance, corrosion, and thermomechanical stress effects of packaging technologies (Mathuna, 1992). However, multisensor chips have to be driven by computerized test equipment(Alderman, Tustaniwskyi, and Usell, 1986 Boudreaux et al., 1991) in order to power the chip in a manner that... 

The effects of flow rate (flow intensity, turbulence, shear stress) on corrosion have been known for a long time and have been variously called erosion corrosion or flow induced localized corrosion (FILC), which latter term is preferred because it denotes a purely aqueous (liquid) phenomenon, while erosion generally includes the presence of a solid phase. An attempt was made in 1990 to summarize the state of the art of FILC in a symposium [54]. The following is a brief synopsis of the developments in this area, with emphasis on corrosion inhibitor testing. 

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