AE characteristics during stress corrosion cracking of sensitized type 304 stainless steel pipes

The objective of this study was to get a better understanding on acoustic emission (AE) characteristics during stress corrosion cracking (SCC) processes of Type 304 stainless steel, to apply AE techniques to detection and monitoring of SCC of the type experienced with stainless steel boiling water reactor piping. SCC tests were performed on pipe specimens with 20 mm inner diameter. Before testing, all pipe specimens were solution-treated and then sensitized. The SCC tests were conducted in the circulating corrosion test equipment containing the pipe specimen under three kinds of bi-axial stresses, of which Mises equivalent stresses were kept at 172 MNm (17.5 kg/mm2). The test conditions were: the test temperature: 2250C; the concentration of chloride ion: approximately 50 ppm; the concentration of dissolved oxygen: approximately 10 ppm; the flow rate of water: 10 l/hr. Main results were: (1) the failure was caused mainly by intergranular stress corrosion cracking; (2) AE characteristics during the SCC test may be divided into three stages; (3) the most probable AE sources in the 3rd stage may be the phenomena due to the propagation of intergranular stress corrosion cracks; (4) the propagation velocity of intergranular stress corrosion cracks seems to become higher, as the hoop stress applied to the pipe specimens increases, even in the cases of the same value of Mises' equivalent stress; and (5) at the leakage due to SCC, cumulative counts, signal waveforms and peak-amplitude distributions shows a great change and the leakage is readily detectable by standard AE techniques. (author)