WRC 006 ✓ Most Recent

This bulletin consists of two important Swedish reports on the stress-corrosion cracking of stainless steels, including both practical experience and the results of research work.

In the autumn of 1943 the technical research organization of Jernkontoret (The Swedish Ironmasters Association) decided to start work on stress-corrosion cracking of stainless steels.

For this work a committee was appointed consisting of S. Bergh, G. Lilljekvist, G. Lindh, G. Phargmen and the author.

S. Brennert soon entered the committee and later on H. Kjerrman, E. Rudberg, Folke E. Nilsson, A. Franzen and A. Johansson have been added.

The committee has suffered two great losses by the deaths of H. Kjerrman and G. Phragmen.

Lindh and Bergh have left the committee which thus now consists of Brennert, Franzen, Johansson, Lilljekvist, Nilsson, Rudberg and the author.

As a starting point for the work of the committee an inventory has been made of the experiences of the different members of the committee concerning stress corrosion cracking of stainless steels in practical use.

The present paper is based on this inventory and contains experiences from Avesta Jernverks AB, Fagersta Bruks AB, Sandvikens Jernverks AB and AB Uddeholm as well as from a number of producers of apparatus and machines made of stainless steel.

The compilation has also been supplemented with certain cases taken from the literature.

The experience available was practically only from austenitic steels of the so-called 18-8 type (Cr 18, Ni 8%).

In many cases the steels of this type also contained 1.5% Mo.

Steels of the 18-8 type are of course by far the most common on the market.