Stainless steels are playing an increasingly role in civil engineering, especially in coastal and marine constructions, where the concentration of chloride ions is higher. Their use as concrete reinforcement rebar is an interesting example of that idea. However, although some studies about the use of stainless steels in prestressing are emerging, no realistic realization has been performed. This might be due to technical lock as the high mechanical strength needed for prestressing seems to be difficult to achieve with stainless steels. Moreover, even if these mechanical characteristics could be obtain, the stress corrosion cracking behavior of this kind of grade in simu-lated concrete pore solution is unknown. In this context, the aim of this work is to study, regarding hydrogen embrittlement (HE) and chloride stress corrosion cracking (SCC), two stainless steel grades (austenitic and duplex) which were formed to pre-sent high strength. Hydrogen embrittlement resistance of the two grades was studied thanks to the ISO 15630-3 standard stress corrosion cracking test where a corrosive solution of ammonium thiocyanate NH4SCN was used. A more realistic environment was used to evaluate their susceptibility to SCC. Thus, slow strain rate tests (SSRT) were performed in a simulated degraded concrete pore solution (pH = 8) with high chlorides content ([Cl-]=17,5g.L-1). In the two cases, the results are presented and discussed with respect to the microstructure of the two stainless steel grades.
