Hydrogen is Like Kryptonite to Steel. Some Scientists Are Trying to Figure Out Why.
11/12/2015 - Researchers from several U.K. universities have teamed up to better understand a perplexing metallurgical problem: Why do steel and other metals become brittle in the presence of hydrogen?
The initiative, dubbed HEmS (Hydrogen in Metals -- From Fundamentals to the Design of New Steels), includes scientists from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Sheffield, Imperial College London, and King's College London.
“It has been known for over a hundred years that hydrogen causes catastrophic failure in high strength steels. The overall aim of HEmS is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the process of hydrogen embrittlement in steels, through an integration of advanced characterization, testing and modeling techniques. This new understanding will be used to develop new ultra-high-strength steels that are resistant to embrittlement in the presence of hydrogen,” the initiative's website states.
University of Oxford materials engineering professor Alan Cocks told the Oxford Science Blog that some steels can suffer a decrease in strength by as much as a factor of 10 when they're exposed to hydrogen, which means that they could fail when subjected to just a tenth of the maximum stress they can usually withstand.
"It seems like it should be a straightforward problem to solve," said Cocks. "But there's immense controversy about why it happens, and despite lots of experimental studies and theoretical modeling, there's still no real solution,” he said.
To make progress, the researchers decided to put together a team that understood metals from the atom up, according to the science blog. So some on the team are investigating how materials work at the atomic level, and others are modeling the larger-scale properties of the materials and the ways that hydrogen can move through metallic structures. And still others are working on different aspects of modeling as well as the design, fabrication and testing of new metals.
The team has been working on the problem for more than a year now, and many challenges remain, Cocks told the Science Blog.
“But we think we're finally getting close to a point where everything will fall into the right place.”
“It has been known for over a hundred years that hydrogen causes catastrophic failure in high strength steels. The overall aim of HEmS is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the process of hydrogen embrittlement in steels, through an integration of advanced characterization, testing and modeling techniques. This new understanding will be used to develop new ultra-high-strength steels that are resistant to embrittlement in the presence of hydrogen,” the initiative's website states.
University of Oxford materials engineering professor Alan Cocks told the Oxford Science Blog that some steels can suffer a decrease in strength by as much as a factor of 10 when they're exposed to hydrogen, which means that they could fail when subjected to just a tenth of the maximum stress they can usually withstand.
"It seems like it should be a straightforward problem to solve," said Cocks. "But there's immense controversy about why it happens, and despite lots of experimental studies and theoretical modeling, there's still no real solution,” he said.
To make progress, the researchers decided to put together a team that understood metals from the atom up, according to the science blog. So some on the team are investigating how materials work at the atomic level, and others are modeling the larger-scale properties of the materials and the ways that hydrogen can move through metallic structures. And still others are working on different aspects of modeling as well as the design, fabrication and testing of new metals.
The team has been working on the problem for more than a year now, and many challenges remain, Cocks told the Science Blog.
“But we think we're finally getting close to a point where everything will fall into the right place.”
