Papers - Corrosion - Internal Stress and Season Cracking in Brass Tubes (With Discussion)

Internal stress and season cracking in brass have been studied for many years and the technical literature contains many data on various phases of the subject. A resume of the literature shows certain fairly well established points upon which various authors are mostly agreed: 1. Season cracking is primarily caused by the presence of relatively high internal stresses, or possibly in some cases by external stresses, or both. 2. A specific corrosion is also essential to season cracking. Certain agents, particularly mercurous salts, mercuric salts and ammonia salts, have such a specific corrosive effect. 3. The tendency to season crack under given conditions increases with increasing zinc content, brass containing less than 20 per cent. zinc being relatively immune. 4. In alpha brass the season cracks are intercrystalline; in alpha-beta brass they lie between the two constituents; and in beta brass they are transcrystalline. 5. The ordinary impurities or added elements in special brasses have little or no effect on the tendency to season crack. 6. Internal stresses can be eliminated, or at least reduced to a safe limit by annealing treatments at temperatures that do not produce visible microstructural changes or appreciable softening of the worked brasses. There are, however, some points in connection with the phenomenon of season cracking which have not been thoroughly investigated, or wherein different authors and investigators are not entirely in agreement. The investigations described in this paper were undertaken to determine: 1. The correlation between mercurous nitrate tests and actual season cracking on long-time atmospheric exposure. 2. The quantitative effect of type and degree of drawing operations on the intensity of internal stress and on the tendency to season crack in brass tubes. 3. The possibility of drawing high-brass tubes in such a manner as to prevent the occurrence of harmful stresses rather than to find a remedy for such stresses once having obtained them.