The Effect of Environmental and Mechanical Variables on Stress Corrosion Cracking of a Martensitic Stainless Steel for Transmutation Applications

Extensive work has been performed on Type 422 stainless steel (SS), to characterize environment-induced degradations in aqueous environments of different pH values at ambient and elevated temperatures. The test material was thermally treated prior to the evaluation of stress-corrosion-cracking (SCC) behavior by slow-strain-rate (SSR) and constant-load (CL) testing techniques, using smooth and notched tensile specimens. Cyclic potentiodynamic polarization (CPP) testing was performed to evaluate localized corrosion behavior using a three-electrode polarization technique in similar environments. Fractographic and metallographic evaluations of broken specimens were also performed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and optical microscope, respectively.