Abstract
Corrosion fatigue crack growth rates as a function of the stress intensity factor range were investigated in synthetic sea water at the frequency of 1.0Hz under various electrochemical potentials applied. The electrochemical potential affects the relative crack growth rate, defined here as a ratio of the growth rate in synthetic sea water to that in laboratory ambient air. The change in the relative crack growth rate with the electrochemical potentials applied could be interpreted qualitatively in terms of the interaction of the crack growth acceleration due to the dissolution-assisted and the hydrogen-assisted mechanisms with the growth deceleration due to calcareous deposits formation, depending on the level of electrochemical potentials applied.
