A review study on Corrosion Fatigue and its related testing methodologies

Abstract

Corrosion Fatigue is the mechanical degradation of a material under the joint action of damage mechanisms corrosion and fatigue. Corrosive nature of the seawater puts severe durability requirements on materials of which are often exposed to corrosion fatigue and abrasive conditions simultaneously. Therefore, identification of the combined effects of both corrosion and fatigue damage mechanisms is necessary to improve predictive models for the corrosion fatigue phenomenon. Present article is the result of a desktop study (scientific literature and standards) with the aim of study the feasibility of designing and manufacturing of a corrosion fatigue testing set-up that would allow the designer to compare the performance of different materials exposed to corrosion fatigue, permitting also the comparison with results from dry fatigue testing. The corrosion fatigue mechanism is described in more detail and a short presentation of some typical lab-scale corrosion fatigue test setups is given. This is followed by illustration of international standards and guidelines which will be used to design a new corrosion fatigue test set-up for evaluating the fatigue behavior of material in seawater environment. Finally the experimental techniques for corrosion fatigue crack detection and propagation along with the fundamental basic of corrosion fatigue modeling are illustrated.