Stress corrosion cracking of eutectoid steels with progressive cold drawing

Abstract

The consequences of the microstructural evolution in an eutectoid steel that has undergone a cold drawing process are studied. This manufacturing technique produces changes in the steel microstructure: a progressive orientation and slenderising of the pearlite colonies and an orientation and packing of the pearlite lamellae, thus reducing the interlamellar spacing. In addition, the experimental results of the stress corrosion cracking tests show that cold drawing produces resistant anisotropy in the steel and thus the stress corrosion cracking resistance is a directional property which seems to depend on the orientation of the microstructure in relation to the cold drawing direction. As a consequence, a transversal crack tends to change its propagation direction approaching the wire axis and a crack growth in mode I evolves to a mixed mode propagation.