Researchers have taken the characteristic that’s usually an obstacle to the design of lightweight, reliable steel structures and turned it into a mechanism that makes the metal more resistant to hydrogen-induced cracking.
When hydrogen, our planet’s lightest and most abundant atom, is introduced into high-strength alloys such as steel, the metal becomes brittle. Called hydrogen embrittlement, this phenomenon causes the material’s properties to deteriorate, making the metal less ductile and weaker. This leads to cracks. Since steel makes up around 90 % of the metal alloy market, even a small improvement in its properties could have far-reaching effects. The stronger the metal, the more susceptible it is to hydrogen embrittlement. Turning this drawback into an advantage, researchers from Germany’s Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung have developed a counter-intuitive strategy that uses the chemical heterogeneity in the metal’s microstructure to make the material more crack-resistant and inhibit crack growth. With support from the EU-funded SHINE project, they’ve turned the very characteristic that’s usually unwanted because of its detrimental effect on the damage tolerance of steel into a mechanism that enhances the metal’s intrinsic resistance to hydrogen embrittlement. Their research results have been published in the journal ‘Nature Materials’.
The secret’s in the buffer zones
The team applied their strategy to a lightweight, manganese-containing high-strength steel,...
Read Full Story: https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/430650-making-high-strength-steel-more-hydrogen-resistant
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