Abstract
IT has been known for more than 10 years that titanium alloys suffer from intergranular stress corrosion cracking if they are in contact with chlorides at elevated temperatures (> 250° C), but it was only 18 months ago that Brown1 discovered that stress corrosion failures could occur at room temperature in a 3 per cent solution of sodium chloride. Titanium alloys are highly resistant to pitting attack in chloride solutions, and in order to investigate crack propagation rather than crack initiation, Brown used specimens of titanium alloy in the form of notched rectangular bars which had been fatigued in air until fine cracks had formed at the base of the notch. He found with static load tests that under plain strain conditions a 3 per cent solution of sodium chloride caused a decrease in the resistance of the alloy to the further propagation of the crack. This was a very important result, as it indicated that the stress corrosion resistance of titanium alloys under marine conditions depended on the resistance of the surface oxide on the alloy to the solution and not on the intrinsic resistance of the alloy lattice to the propagation of a stress corrosion crack which is the only really safe criterion.
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Brown, B. F., and Beachem, C. D., Corr. Sci., 5, 745 (1965).
Sanderson, G., and Scully, J. C., Corr. Sci. (to be published).
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SANDERSON, G., SCULLY, J. Room Temperature Stress Corrosion Cracking of Titanium Alloys. Nature 211, 179 (1966). https://doi.org/10.1038/211179a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/211179a0
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