Reviews on Advanced Materials Science (Mar 2018)

Hydrogen Embrittlement of Ultrafine-Grained Austenitic Stainless Steels

  • Astafurova E. G.,
  • Astafurov S. V.,
  • Maier G. G.,
  • Moskvina V. A.,
  • Melnikov E. V.,
  • Fortuna A. S.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1515/rams-2018-0018
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 54, no. 1
pp. 25 – 45

Abstract

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The effect of electrochemical hydrogen-charging on tensile properties, mechanisms of plastic deformation and fracture micromechanisms was studied using two ultrafine-grained (UFG) Cr-Ni austenitic stainless steels. UFG austenitic structures with an average subgrain size of 200 nm for CrNiMo (316L-type) and 520 nm for CrNiTi (321-type) steel were produced using hot-to-warm ABC-pressing. Hydrogen-charging up to 100 hours weakly influences stages of plastic flow, strength properties and elongation of the UFG steels. TEM analysis testifies to hydrogen-assisted partial annihilation and rearrangement of dislocations into dislocation tangles, and to hydrogen-induced variation in ratio of low- and high-angle misorientations in UFG structure of both steels. Hydrogen-alloying promotes mechanical twinning and deformation-induced γ ® e martensitic transformation in the UFG steels under tension. Ultrafine-grained CrNiTi steel with lower stacking fault energy (SFE) is more susceptible to mechanical twinning and deformation-induced γ ® e martensitic transformation in comparison with CrNiMo steel with higher SFE. The micromechanism of the fracture in hydrogen-assisted surface layers of the steels is compositional, grain-size and hydrogen content dependent characteristic. The present results demonstrate that the steels with UFG structure possess higher resistance to hydrogen embrittlement compared to coarse-grained analogues.