Season cracking

Season cracking

Zinc as an Alloying Element

Published in Frank Porter, Zinc Handbook, 1991

Another limitation with brasses and other copper alloys is that they are rapidly attacked by ammonia in moist conditions, with the formation of a bright blue corrosion product, and contact should be avoided. Even in very low concentrations of ammonia, brass that is stressed by either residual or applied tension will spontaneously crack by stress corrosion - originally called 'season cracking'. Mercury and moist chlorine may also cause similar failure. Under such circumstances, a stress-relief heat treatment is advisable before such items are used in aggressive environments. Brasses are resistant to other alkalis.

Stress corrosion cracking – materials performance and evaluation

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Journal Information

Published in Corrosion Engineering, Science and Technology, 2019

David Nuttall

Early reports of environment-induced cracking or embrittlement of materials include, ‘season cracking of brass’, more than eighty years ago, resulted by storing cartridge cases in horse barns, in contact with ammonia. It was suggested in 1873 that hydrogen was a major cause of embrittlement in iron and steels. Stress–corrosion cracking (SCC) is a term used to describe service failures in engineering materials that occur by slow, environmentally induced crack propagation as a result of the combined synergistic interaction of mechanical stress and corrosion reactions. Early examples include the explosion of a boiler by caustic ‘embrittlement’ and the failure of a steel hook causing the side of a building to collapse. Recent examples include stress–corrosion of steam turbine equipment, nuclear piping and gas pipelines.

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Zinc as an Alloying Element

Stress corrosion cracking – materials performance and evaluation