Abstract
Hydrogen embrittlement is shown to occur very easily in notched-round bars under opening modeI (tension) but not under antiplane shear modeIII (torsion). The stress tensor invariants under modeI,II, andIII loadings and how these affect interstitial diffusion are discussed. It is suggested that long range diffusion of hydrogen down orthogonal trajectories to the vicinity of the crack tip, which can occur under modeI but not modeIII, is a key part of any hydrogen embrittlement mechanism. This premise was evaluated with AISI 4340 steel heat treated to ultrahigh strength levels. It was found that an initial modeI stress intensity level of 17,000 psi-in.1/2 produced failure in several minutes. ModeIII stress intensity levels three times this produced no crack initiation in 300 min. Further analysis of the time-dependent hydrogen concentrating effect utilized a stress wave emission technique. This produced plausible critical hydrogen concentrations even though the present elastic analysis is a first order approximation of the stress field.
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