Experimental Investigation of Hydrogen Embrittlement in Industrial Steels

Prevention of Hydrogen Embrittlement in Steels

The essential facts about the nature of the hydrogen embrittlement of steels have now been known for 140 years. It is diffusible hydrogen that is harmful to the toughness of iron. It follows, therefore, that the harmful influence of diffusible hydrogen can be mitigated by preventing its entry into steel or by rendering it immobile once it penetrates the material. This review deals with the meth...

Characteristics of Hydrogen Embrittlement, Stress Corrosion Cracking and Tempered Martensite Embrittlement in High-strength Steels

Characteristics of tempered martensite embrittlement (TME), hydrogen embrittlement (HE), and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in high-strength steels are reviewed. Often, it is important to determine unambiguously by which of these mechanisms failure occurred, in order to suggest the right actions to prevent failure recurrence. To this aim, samples made of high-strength AISI 4340 alloy steel wer...

Understanding and mitigating hydrogen embrittlement of steels: a review of experimental, modelling and design progress from atomistic to continuum

A Comparison of Hydrogen Embrittlement and Stress Corrosion Cracking in High Strength Steels

The purpose of this study was to compare the known behavior of hydrogen embrittled high-strength steel to the characteristics of environmentallyinduced stress corrosion failure where hydrogen is continuously generated at the specimen surface. The incubation time for the initiation of slow crack growth was accelerated by prestressing for a fixed time below the lower critical limit. These results...

Effects of tungsten on the hydrogen embrittlement behaviour of microalloyed steels

The effects of tungsten (W) additions (0, 0.1, 0.5 and 1 wt.%) on the hydrogen embrittlement behaviour of microalloyed steels were systematically investigated by means of slow strain rate tests on circumferentially notched cylindrical specimens, and the mechanism of hydrogen-induced embrittlement was discussed. W addition is found to increase the activation energy of hydrogen desorption. Micros...