Fatigue Crack Growth Behaviour of High Strength Ferritic Steels in High Pressure Hydrogen

The design of safe and low-cost, high-pressure hydrogen storage systems are a critical need for harnessing clean power but must consider the propensity of hydrogen to accelerate fatigue crack growth rates in the construction materials. Design of safe pressure vessels needs robust models for predicting crack growth rates and how they are affected by variables such as loading frequency, load ratios, hydrogen pressure, gaseous impurities, temperature, and material variability. In this study, fatigue crack growth rates were measured in the liner material in 10 MPa gaseous hydrogen at various load ratios, R, in the range -1 ≤ R ≤ 0.2. The effects of varying loading frequency were investigated, and the results were pooled with those from literature for similar alloys tested in 103 MPa gaseous hydrogen pressure. The differences in crack growth rates between H2 pressures of 10 to 103 MPa as well as the effects of frequency on the environment assisted crack growth rates were assessed. Loading frequency effects tend to saturate at frequencies of 1 Hz and less. H2 pressure effects appear to saturate at pressures of 45MPa, while load ratio effects are not significant for –1 ≤ R ≤ 0.2 but become important for R ≥ 0.2