Failure analysis of cracking of 316L stainless steel corrugated compensator

Abstract the corrugated compensator is a kind of compensation element. In this paper, the cracking problem of a 316L corrugated compensator located under the compressor outlet is analyzed, and the reasons for the failure are found in macro-inspection, chemical composition analysis, metallographic analysis, and energy spectrum analysis. The results of the study indicated that the material of the corrugated compensator did not comply with the manufacturing requirements, and chlorine was found in a corrosive medium. Combined with the dendritic characteristics of metallographic cracks, It is judged that this failure is because the content of Ni element is lower than the standard requirements, which results in a decrease in the material’s resistance to pitting and to chloride ion stress corrosion cracking, which leads to chloride ion stress corrosion cracking of the corrugated compensator and finally leads to leakage failure. At the same time, given the repeated occurrence of similar faults, some reasonable suggestions are put forward.