Coupled Microstructure-Based Stress Corrosion Cracking Simulations of Type 304 Stainless Steel with Fast Fourier Transform Crystal Plasticity

Abstract

A scalable and computationally efficient crystal plasticity method is coupled with a simulation technique for explicit cracking along grain boundaries to develop a large-scale microstructure- based explicit cracking framework for stress corrosion cracking (SCC). Previous work loosely coupled the cracking simulation with the crystal plasticity method by operating sequentially after the deformation simulation completed, whereas this work sequentially couples the two methods after each deformation simulation increment. This work enables the development of computationally efficient three-dimensional (3D) explicit large-scale microstructure-based models needed to simulate and predict SCC in plant components. Explicit cracking was simulated for a measured 304 stainless steel microstructure subjected to cold rolling and subsequent loading associated with laboratory testing as a demonstration of the framework. The framework employs an elementary cracking criterion and crystal plasticity model.