Contributions of weld geometry and joint design to stress corrosion cracking of pressure vessels

摘要

A review of published surveys and experience at the Caltex Refinery, indicates that nozzleor manway attachment welds of carbon steel pressure vessels, are prone to stress corrosion cracking. This is particularly so in aqueous hydrogen sulphide and/or aqueous hydrogen carbonate environments, even when post-weld heat treatment had been applied. This can be explained in terms of design and manufacturing techniques commonly employed to fabricate these vessels. A simple strategy for reducing the susceptibility to cracking in these cases, is proposed in this paper and an experiment is described for testing the effectiveness of the strategy.