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An investigation of the effect of hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) on corrosion crack growth can be considered as a necessary stage in a study of the SCC of pipeline steels in the presence of dissolved oxygen and other oxidants. It was found that the presence of hydrogen peroxide at a low concentration (5 mM) results in a deceleration of the crack growth. With an increase in the concentration of H 2 O 2 , the crack growth rate increases. The change in the steel corrosion rate at various H 2 O 2 concentrations agrees with the dependence of the crack growth rate on the oxidant concentration. The conclusion has been made that the crack growth in a weakly acidic electrolyte (pH 5.5) is determined by the metal dissolution process. Hydrogen charging of the metal indirectly affects the crack growth by increasing the surface coverage with hydrogen, which decreases the steel dissolution rate.

Based on the data of X-ray texture and structure analysis of the material of main gas pipelines it was shown that the layerwise inhomogeneity of tubes is formed during their manufacturing. The layerwise texture inhomogeneity of steel tubes, obtained by hot rolling at the air, differs depending on variation of technological parameters of their processing in inner and outer layers, i.e. the temperature and deformation gradients, penetration of interstitial impurities into the surface layer from surrounding atmosphere etc. The thickness of the surface layer with modified texture parameters depends on the temperature of rolling and its regime. Under exploitation when stress-corrosion cracks grows and reach the layer with a modified texture, their opening is slowing down or stops because of the high mutual misorientation of grains of different layers and the necessity of changing the plane of moving cracks, what requires additional tensile stresses. Layered textures of different gas tubes were compared. It was shown that character and degree of arising inhomogeneity correlates with the tubes resistance to stress-corrosion cracking.

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