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Hydrogen interaction with metals is well known to have severe detrimental effects on their mechanical properties. The use of modern high-strength steels, which are attractive to improve fuel economy by reducing weight as well as candidates for H storage cylinders and other components, is currently being severely limited by the fact that the presence of H can cause embrittlement of the material. In addition to steel, several other metals and alloys used in the nuclear industry, like Ti and Zr, are susceptible to H degradation through hydride formation and subsequent cracking.
Microstructure-specific H mapping has been recognized as the most important challenge on the pathway towards a better understanding of the nature of H embrittlement in metallic alloys as well as the development of H storage solutions based on metal hydrides. Unfortunately, the characterization of H interactions with metals is an extremely challenging task and neutron-based techniques are of exceptional importance in this matter because – contrary to X-rays and electrons – thermal and cold neutrons interact strongly with the H nuclei, while the neutron beam is only weakly attenuated by the relevant metallic materials. Therefore, hydrogen distributions can be measured and quantified even in 3D by tomographic methods.
Here we present several neutron imaging investigations of embrittlement and cracking in Fe and Zr based metal alloys and optimization studies of hydrogen storage systems containing metal hydrides as an active substance. The advantages and the limitations of the experimental methods as well as the attempts for hydrogen quantification will be discussed in detail.
Metastable austenitic stainless steel (304L) samples with a rectangular cross-section were plastically deformed in torsion during which they experienced multiaxial stresses that led to a complex martensitic phase distribution owing to the transformation induced plasticity effect. A three-dimensional characterization of the phase distributions in these cm-sized samples was carried out by wavelength-selective neutron tomography. It was found that quantitatively correct results are obtained as long as the samples do not exhibit any considerable preferential grain orientation. Optical microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction, and finite element modeling were used to verify and explain the results obtained by neutron tomography. Altogether, neutron tomography was shown to extend the range of microstructure characterization methods towards the meso- and macroscale.