Detection and characterization of stress-corrosion cracking on 304 stainless steel by electrochemical noise and acoustic emission techniques

This paper focuses on the corrosion process of 304 stainless steel in acidic NaCl solution during slow strain rate testing experiment by using electrochemical noise (EN) and acoustic emission (AE) techniques. Meanwhile, the EN and AE characteristics of corrosion process were studied. The results show that stress corrosion occurs easily in the experimental system, and corrosion forms develops gradually from localized corrosion including stress corrosion and pitting corrosion to general corrosion. The AE signal characteristics of pitting corrosion, crack and bubble break-up are significantly different during the corrosion process.

► The corrosion process of 304 stainless steel during SSRT was studied by using EN and AE techniques.
► The AE signals in corrosion process were clustered based on K-means clustering algorithm.
► The AE signal characteristics were analyzed by wavelet packet.
► The good correlation of EN and AE measurements were confirmed by the experiment results.