Hydrogen and Materials: Influence of the Hydrogen Environment on the Metallic Materials Behavior

The materials sensitivity to hydrogen is studied and measured in this work using the disk pressure testing, whose principle is the comparison of the rupture parameters obtained with metallic membranes tested similarly under helium and hydrogen. Such technique allows various studies and reveals parameters that remain not significant with less sensitive methods. This work presents an overview of numerous experimental results concerning the influence of various factors (material and gas composition, mechanical and heat treatments, type of microstructure...) on the hydrogen embrittlement of ferrous and nonferrous alloys. There are shown synergies between such factors, related to physical and metallurgical phenomena and we give some practical considerations, which can be useful for the evaluation of the safety offered by different materials in contact with hydrogen and for searching ways to improve their behavior.