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Detection of Hydrogen Embrittlement in Plated High-Strength Steels with Eddy Currents: Is the Sensitivity Sufficient?

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Abstract

Hydrogen embrittlement (HE) of high-strength steels has been a long-standing issue in the aerospace industry. Detecting the presence of hydrogen in steel with a low-cost and fast non-destructive method would be useful to avoid wasting parts. In this paper, we evaluate the feasibility of using eddy currents to achieve this goal. At first, we evaluate HE and hydrogen content in a series of chromium-plated 4340 steel notched bar samples (extremely embrittled) using sustained-load tests and thermal desorption spectroscopy. The failure of the notched bars at only 20% of their maximum mechanical load is coherent with the high hydrogen concentration in the samples, which can be as high as 1400 ppm atomic (\(\sim \,30\%\) in steel, \(\sim \,70\%\) in the coating). However, a baking at \(190\,{^{\circ }}\hbox {C}\) for 23 h can desorb most embrittling hydrogen in the 4340 steel and relieve HE. Therefore, successive bakings are used to progressively desorb hydrogen from the samples and produce various hydrogen concentrations. By using eddy currents after each baking, coupled with a finite element model implemented in COMSOL, we can deduce the electric and magnetic properties of steel and chromium as a function of hydrogen concentration. Unfortunately, no significant variation of these properties can be observed, even for concentration variations as large as \(\sim \,900\,\hbox {ppma}\). The only observable changes happen after performing bakings at high temperature, which induce microstructural changes in the samples. However, eddy currents remain a good approach to detect small changes in electromagnetic materials properties resulting from other causes than hydrogen.

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Notes

  1. As show in next section, the rightmost part of the TDS curves correspond to desorption of hydrogen located in the chromium coating. None of this hydrogen contributes to HE.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Consortium de Recherche et d’Innovation en Aérospatiale au Québec (CRIAQ), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), as well as the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FRQNT). We also want to thank our industrial partners, i.e. Bell Helicopter, Héroux-Devtek and Safran.

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  1. Polytechnique Montréal, Montreal, QC, H3T 1J4, Canada

    J. Bellemare, D. Ménard & F. Sirois

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  1. J. Bellemare
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  2. D. Ménard
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  3. F. Sirois
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Bellemare, J., Ménard, D. & Sirois, F. Detection of Hydrogen Embrittlement in Plated High-Strength Steels with Eddy Currents: Is the Sensitivity Sufficient?. J Nondestruct Eval 39, 46 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10921-020-00691-4

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