Simulation of inter– and transgranular crack propagation in polycrystalline aggregates due to stress corrosion cracking

The motivation of the study is the development of a coupled approach able to account for the interaction between environment and plasticity in a polycrystalline material. The paper recalls first the constitutive equations used to describe the behaviour of the grain core and of the grain boundary (GB). The procedure that is applied to generate synthetic polycrystalline aggregates with an explicit representation of the grain boundary area by 2D or 3D finite elements is then described. The approach is applied to the modeling of iodine assisted stress corrosion cracking (IASCC) in Zircaloy tubes used in nuclear power plants.