Meso-microstructural computational simulation of the hydrogen permeation test to calculate intergranular, grain boundary and effective diffusivities

Abstract

Hydrogen induced intergranular embrittlement has been identified as a cause of failure of aerospace components such as combustion chambers made from electrodeposited polycrystalline nickel. Accurate computational analysis of this process requires knowledge of the differential in hydrogen transport in the intergranular and intragranular regions. The effective diffusion coefficient of hydrogen may be measured experimentally, though experimental measurement of the intergranular grain boundary diffusion coefficient of hydrogen requires significant effort. Therefore an approach to calculate the intergranular GB hydrogen diffusivity using finite element analysis was developed. The effective diffusivity of hydrogen in polycrystalline nickel was measured using electrochemical permeation tests. Data from electron backscatter diffraction measurements were used to construct microstructural representative volume elements including details of grain size and shape and volume fraction of grains and grain boundaries. A Python optimization code has been developed for the ABAQUS environment to calculate the unknown grain boundary diffusivity.