Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) is a well known form of environmental attack in low carat gold jewellery. It is desirable to have a quick, easy and cost effective way to detect SCC in alloys and prevent them from being used and later failing in their application. A facile chemical method to investigate SCC of 9 carat gold alloys is demonstrated. It involves a simple application of tensile stress to a wire sample in a corrosive environment such as 1–10 % FeCl3 which induces failure in less than 5 minutes. In this study three quaternary (Au, Ag, Cu and Zn) 9 carat gold alloy compositions were investigated for their resistance to SCC and the relationship between time to failure and processing conditions is studied. It is envisaged that the use of such a rapid and facile screening procedure at the production stage may readily identify alloy treatments that produce jewellery that will be susceptible to SCC in its lifetime.

中文翻译：

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一种检测 9 克拉金合金应力腐蚀裂纹的简便化学筛选方法

应力腐蚀开裂 (SCC) 是一种众所周知的低克拉黄金首饰中的环境侵蚀形式。需要有一种快速、简单且具有成本效益的方法来检测合金中的 SCC，并防止它们被使用并在以后的应用中失败。演示了一种简单的化学方法来研究 9 克拉金合金的 SCC。它涉及在腐蚀性环境（例如 1–10 % FeCl3）中对线材样品施加简单的拉伸应力，在不到 5 分钟的时间内引发故障。在这项研究中，研究了三种四元（Au、Ag、Cu 和 Zn）9 克拉金合金成分的抗 SCC 能力，并研究了失效时间与加工条件之间的关系。