The important characteristic of these tests is that the strain rate is low, for example extension rates selected in the range from 10 to 10 s. The selection of the strain rate is very important because the susceptibility to cracking may not be evident from result of tests at too low or too high strain rate. For numerous material-environment systems, strain rates in range 10 - 10 s are used; however, the observed absence of cracking at a given strain rate should not be taken as a proof of immunity to cracking. There are known cases wherein the susceptibility to stress-corrosion cracking only became evident at strain rates as low as 10 or 10 s. Nevertheless, the method is very suitable for mechanistic studies, as well as for relative ranking of susceptibility to cracking of different alloys, or the aggressiveness of environments and the effect of temperature, pH, metallurgical condition etc.
The fastest strain rate that will still promote SCC for a given environment-material system is sometimes called the "critical strain rate", some values are given in the table: