Simulation of hydrogen-induced failure in high strength steel

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We present a coupled chemo-mechanical and fracture mechanics-based model capable of predicting the onset of hydrogen-induced macroscopic crack growth as a function of material, loading and environmental variables. The model is implemented using the commercial multi-physics simulation package COMSOL and solved as a coupled deformation–diffusion problem to define a fracture criterion as a function of residual and externally applied loads and hydrogen concentration. The local hydrogen-induced material damage is approximated by a parametric dependency of local fracture resistance on hydrogen concentration. As an example, we demonstrate the ductile-brittle transition of the failure pattern of a double-notch specimen under tension w/o and w/ hydrogen loading.