from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Hydrogen may cause severe degradation on some high strength alloys, and although research efforts have intensified in recent years, our understanding of such phenomena still has room for improvement. For the metallurgical industry it would be useful to have applicable criteria able to predict the risk of hydrogen embrittlement and therefore be able to prevent embritlement damage to industrial products. Several complex and competing mechanisms are ultimately responsible for hydrogen embrittlement (HAC, HIE, AIDE, HELP, HEDE, etc.), although it should be obvious that many embrittlement episodes originate from a localised excess in hydrogen concentration. A physical model of hydrogen diffusion that has been hitherto applied to study the manufacturing of metallic alloys is used in this work to develop and illustrate some useful criteria of embrittlement risk associated to industrial practices. By estimating the degree of supersaturation at specific regions in the component, and considering microstructure features or mechanical properties, it is possible to anticipate defect formation and embrittlement risk, opening the possibility to prevent it.
Keywords: hydrogen, steel, damage prediction, microstructure, physical model© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.