Crystallographic orientation data from chloride-induced stress corrosion crack (CISCC) paths in gas tungsten arc welded (GTAW) austenitic stainless steel 304L
Description
This dataset presents crystallographic data collected along chloride-induced stress corrosion cracks (CISCC) in a gas tungsten arc welded (GTAW) austenitic stainless steel (AuSS) 304L. The experimental setup involved a welded stainless steel 304L coupon of dimensions 105 mm × 18.5 mm × 3 mm, loaded in a 4-point bending fixture with a maximum tensile stress of 380 MPa. The fixtured specimen was immersed in boiling magnesium chloride (MgCl2) solution until a through-crack was observed on the specimen surface after 17 hours of boiling. The cross-section was subsequently polished, and 37 cracks of interest in the heat affected zone (HAZ) and weld zone (WZ) were selected for crystallographic characterization. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) based electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) was used to map the grain orientations along and surrounding each crack path. The obtained orientation imaging microscopy (OIM) datasets were post-processed using EDAX OIM V8 proprietary software to generate inverse pole figures (IPF), image quality (IQ) figures, detector signal (SEM) images, and to determine the Taylor factor and Schmid factor of mapped grains. This dataset can be used to understand CISCC crack initiation, propagation, and termination behaviors, as has been reported in the accompanying original research article. This data article providing the raw EBSD OIM datasets and processed images formatted for accessibility in future studies. This comprehensive EBSD dataset can further be used to extract grain boundary misorientation information; benchmark comparative studies of SCC/CISCC in AuSS and other Fe or Ni alloys; and provide critical validation data on grain morphology, misorientation, and crystallography for GTAW and CISCC models. The data repository contains raw SEM EBSD files and associated image files for 37 CISCC cracks observed in GTAW 304L AuSS. All files for a given crack are organized into a dedicated folder with naming convention “zone #” – where “zone” indicates whether the crack was located in the heat-affected zone (HAZ) or the weld zone (WZ), and “#” is the identification number of the crack. The files in each of these folders are: • zone #.oim – Raw EBSD OIM file • zone IPF #.tif – inverse pole figure (IPF) image • zone IQ #.tif – image quality (IQ) figure • zone EBSD-SEM #.tif – SEM EBSD detector signal image of the crack(s) • zone HR-SEM #.tif – High resolution SEM image of the crack(s) In addition, a table DATA IN BRIEF crack behavior summary table. xlsx is also included in the repository to link the raw data and image files to key metadata including crack initiation mode, propagation mode, crack length, and other notable behaviors.