Stress Corrosion Crack Growth Beneath a Stiff Coating - influence of Chemical Potential and Interface Toughness

摘要

In the present paper we investigate the influence of corrosion driving forces and interfacial toughness for a coated material subjected to mechanical loading. If the protecting coating is cracked, the substrate material may become exposed to a corrosive media. For a stress corrosion sensitive substrate material, this may lead to detrimental crack growth. A crack is assumed to grow by anodic dissolution, inherently leading to a blunted crack tip. The rate of dissolution along the crack surface is assumed to be proportional to the chemical potential, which is function of the local surface energy density and the elastic strain energy density. The surface energy tends to flatten the surface, whereas the strain energy due to stress concentration promotes material dissolution. The evolution of the crack surface is modelled as a moving boundary problem using an adaptive finite element method. The crack shapes obtained by our simulations are remarkably similar to real stress corrosion cracks reported in the literature.