Modeling of corrosion fatigue in metals in an aggressive environment

Abstract Corrosion fatigue in metals is presented as the result of the combined interaction of mechanical stress and stress-corrosion velocity caused by the aggressive environment. The main concept is that all of the factors that affect stress-corrosion cracking—electrochemical, mechanical and metallurgical—are essential for corrosion fatigue. In addition to the crack velocity caused by stress-corrosion, the only additional parameters needed to predict corrosion fatigue might be the applied mechanical stress, its frequency, and the threshold stress intensity factor. This paper presents an interaction between these phenomena, leading to an analytical expression for the corrosion fatigue in an aggressive environment. The model predictions are compared with the limited amount of published data, showing reasonable agreement.