The role of corrosion pit topography on stress concentration

Smooth semi-ellipsoids are typically used to simulate the effect of corrosion pits on stress, however, this does not account for pit geometry. Three corrosion pits were identified on Nickel Aluminium Bronze samples. These were scanned and converted to finite element models. The linear elastic stress concentration factor (K_t) of the corrosion pit FE models was 1.32–1.65 times larger than for an equivalent smooth semi-ellipsoid. This suggests that detailed consideration of pit geometry is needed to calculate accurate values of K_t and the assumption of a semi-ellipsoidal pit may not be conservative for fatigue lifetime predictions of pitted components.