Crack Growth
The subcritical nature of propagation may be attributed to the chemical energy released as the crack propagates. That is,
- elastic energy released + chemical energy = surface energy + deformation energy
The crack initiates at KIscc and thereafter propagates at a rate governed by the slowest process, which most of the time is the rate at which corrosive ions can diffuse to the crack tip. As the crack advances so K rises (because crack length appears in the calculation of stress intensity). Finally it reaches KIc, whereupon fast fracture ensues and the component fails. One of the practical difficulties with SCC is its unexpected nature. Stainless steels, for example, are employed because under most conditions they are "passive", i.e. effectively inert. Very often one finds a single crack has propagated while the rest of the metal surface stays apparently unaffected. The crack propagates perpendicular to the applied stress.
Read more about this topic: Stress Corrosion Cracking
Famous quotes containing the words crack and/or growth:
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.”
—Harold MacMillan (1894–1986)