Determination of the effective Young's modulus of medium with microstructure typical for hydrogen degradation

Abstract

Degradation of mechanical properties of metals and alloys due to hydrogen absorption is an advanced problem in material science. Dissolved hydrogen changes metal microstructure and leads to microcracks formation. The present paper aims at calculation of the effective elastic properties of metals with a microstructure typical for hydrogen-enhanced degradation. For the purposes of this study, we use Maxwell homogenization scheme and explicit expression for compliance contribution tensor to determine the overall Young's moduli. The model introduces oblate spheroids to describe intergranular microcracks and spheres to describe pores. Within the frame of the paper, we consider random orientations of the microcracks, certain preferential orientation accompanied by random scatter with the scattering parameter and random orientations of the spheroids axis in the same plane. The research focuses on the investigation of the dependence of the effective Young's moduli on the porosity and aspect ratio of a spheroid.

Keywords

• effective young's modulus
• maxwell homogenization scheme
• hydrogen degradation
• spheroidal inhomogeneity