There has been an increase in the production of bio-fuels. Organosolv delignification, high temperature ethanol/water environments, can be used to separate lignin, cellulose, and hemicelluloses in the bio-mass for bio-fuel production. These environments have been shown to induce stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in 316L stainless steel. Previous research has been done in mixed solvent environments at room temperature to understand SCC for stainless steels, but little is known about the behavior in high temperature environments. Simulated organosolv delignification environments were studied, varying water content, temperature, pHe, and Cl- content to understand how these constituents impact SCC. In order for SCC to occur in 316L, there needs to be between 10 and 90 volume % water and the environment needs to be at a temperature around 200°C. Once these two conditions are met, the environment needs to either have pHe < 4 or have more than 10 ppm Cl-. These threshold conditions are based on the organosolv delignification simulated environments tested. SCC severity was seen to increase as water content, temperature, and Cl- content increased and as pHe decreased. To prevent failure of industrial vessels encountering organosolv delignification environments, care needs to be taken to monitor and adjust the constituents to prevent SCC.

[Truncated abstract. Please see pdf format for complete text.] Over the years much work has been done on studying sequence effects under multilevel loading. Yet, the underlying fatigue mechanisms responsible for such interactions are not fully understood. The study of fatigue under complex loading histories begins by investigating strain interaction effects arising from simple 2-step loading sequences. Fatigue for all investigations were conducted under uniaxial push-pull mode in strain-control. Fatigue is traditionally classified as either low or high cycle fatigue (LCF and HCF respectively). The boundary for LCF and HCF is not well-defined even though the fatigue life of LCF is typically dominated by crack “initiation”, while for HCF, fatigue life is usually dominated by stable crack growth. The terms LCF and HCF, apart from referring to the low and high number of fatigue cycles required for failure, also bear little physical meaning in terms of describing the state of fatigue imposed. As a result, conventional definitions of the two distinct regimes of fatigue are challenged and a new method of classifying the boundary between the two regimes of fatigue is proposed. New definitions are proposed and the terms plastically dominant fatigue (PDF) and elastically dominant fatigue (EDF) are introduced as suitable replacements for LCF and HCF respectively. PDF refers to the condition of a material undergoing significant reverse plasticity during cyclic loading, while for EDF, minimal reverse plasticity is experienced. Systematic testing of three materials, 316 L stainless steel, 6061-T6 aluminium alloy and 4340 high strength steel, was performed to fully investigate the cycle ratio trends and “damage” accumulation behaviour which resulted from a variety of loading conditions. Results from this study were carried over to investigate more complex multilevel loading sequences and possible mechanisms for interaction effects observed both under 2-step and multi-step sequences were proposed. Results showed that atypical cycle ratio trends could result from loading sequences which involve combinations of strain amplitudes from different fatigue regimes (i.e. PDF or EDF). Mean strain effects on fatigue life were also studied. The objective of this study was to identify regimes of fatigue which are significantly influenced by mean strains. Results indicated that mean strains affected EDF but not PDF. 2-step tests, similar to those performed in earlier studies were conducted to investigate the effects of mean strain on variable amplitude loading. Again, atypical cycle ratio trends were observed for loading sequences involving combinations of PDF and EDF. It is understood that fatigue crack growth interaction behaviour and mean stress effects are two dominant mechanisms which can be used to explain cycle ratio trends observed. The significance and importance of proper PDF/EDF definition and specification are also stressed. The study of fracture mechanics is an important component of any fatigue research. Fatigue crack growth in 4140 high strength steel CT specimens, under conditions of plane stress and plane strain were studied. In this investigation, the effects of R and overload ratios were also studied for both plane stress and plane strain conditions. Results indicate that differences in the point of crack “initiation” under both plane stress and plane strain conditions decrease with increasing load range, while the extent of crack retardation as a result of overloading, is greater under plane stress than plane strain conditions. The extent of crack growth retardation increases with decreasing R ratios and increasing overload ratios. The final phase of this project involves the proposal of two practical models used to predict cumulative “damage” and fatigue crack propagation in metals. The cumulative “damage” model proposed takes the form of a power law and the exponent which governs “damage” accumulation can easily be calculated by knowing the failure life, Nf, for a given strain or load level. Predictions for the “damage” model performed better when compared to other popular cumulative “damage” models. The second model proposed predicts fatigue crack growth behaviour from known monotonic and smooth specimen fatigue data. There are several benefits of having a model that can predict fatigue crack growth from monotonic and smooth specimen fatigue data: a) traditionally, engineers had to rely on expensive and time-consuming crack propagation tests to evaluate and select materials for maximum fatigue resistance, and b) monotonic and smooth specimen fatigue data are readily available. The crack propagation model is proposed to alleviate the material selection process by providing engineers a means to rapidly eliminate and narrow down selections for possible material candidates.