Investigation of the microstructural growth of sulfide stress corrosion at simulated environments

Abstract

Sulfide stress corrosion (SSC) is a form of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) which is highly prevailed in petroleum pipelines those are mostly made out of mild steels. The mechanism of SSC has not been identified so far even though researchers have been experimenting to define a proper mechanism for years. The focused research of this paper has investigated the behavior of the growth of sulfide stress corrosion at different test environmental conditions. The growth behavior of SSC of API 5L grade B steel has been investigated under two different pH levels (2.7 and 3.5), three different loading conditions (400N, 600N and 800N) and three different time durations (15 days, 30 days and 45 days) in accordance with the ANSI/NACE TM0177-2016 standard test method. The hydrogen embrittlement phenomena becomes the main concern of development of cracks when the time duration gets increased. Distribution of Sulfur along sulfide stress cracks, growing behavior and depth & width of these cracks under the aforementioned test conditions were investigated.