Initiation of environmentally-assisted cracking in low-alloy steels

Environmentally-Assisted Cracking (EAC) in low alloy steels is activated by a critical level of sulfide ions at the crack tip, which is produced from dissolution of sulfide inclusions (MnS, FeS, etc.) in the steel following exposure by a growing crack. EAC of concern herein is the increase of fatigue crack growth rate of up to 40 to 100 times the rate in air that occurs at 240--300 C in high temperature LWR or boiler water environments. The initiation of EAC is the onset of the higher fatigue crack growth rates in fully developed cracks already presumed to be present due to fatigue, stress corrosion cracking, or induced by fabrication. Initiation of EAC is induced by a change in loading parameters causing the fatigue crack growth rate to increase from a small multiple (2--4) to 40--100 times the air rate. A steady state theory developed by Combrade, suggests that EAC will initiate only above a critical crack velocity and cease below this same velocity. However, more recent tests show that EAC can persist down to much lower velocities (100 times lower) in low oxygen water at slightly lower temperatures. A special set of experiments on high sulfur plate material demonstrate that EAC will not initiate from surface cracks with low sulfide inventories at low crack tip velocities. Transient diffusion calculations show that a finite crack extension at a high crack tip velocity is necessary to initiate EAC, providing a possible explanation for the lack of high crack growth observations reported in low alloy steels in structural applications involving low oxygen environments