Abstract
In this work, the effects of electrochemical hydrogen charging of 316H grade austenitic stainless steel were investigated in order to characterize its hydrogen embrittlement (HE) resistance. The as-received 316H material was in a fully recrystallized (solution-annealed) material condition. The susceptibility to HE of the studied material was evaluated by determination of the embrittlement index from the results of conventional uniaxial tensile tests of nonhydrogenated and hydrogen-charged test specimens. The study was focused on the effects of two selected plastic pre-strain levels of tensile specimens on their resulting HE resistance. The selected pre-strains corresponded to the tensile stress conditions within the “yield stress–ultimate tensile strength” (YS–UTS) range and directly at the UTS point. The obtained embrittlement indices for the presently used pre-straining and hydrogen charging conditions indicated that the HE of the studied material states was small. However, it was revealed that the observed degradation of deformation properties of plastically pre-strained and hydrogen-charged materials was mainly caused by gradual plasticity exhaustion due to tensile straining, which well correlated with the observed effects indicated by electron backscatter diffraction analyses and indentation hardness measurements.
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