Ingenieurwissenschaften und zugeordnete Tätigkeiten
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- Hydrogen diffusion (2) (entfernen)
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As onshore installation capacity is limited, the increase in the number of offshore wind turbines (OWT) is a major goal. In that connection, the OWTs continuously increase in size and weight and demand adequate foundations concepts like monopiles or tripods. These components are typically manufactured from welded mild steel plates with thickness up to 200 mm. The predominant welding technique is submerged arc welding (SAW). In accordance with the standards, the occurrence of hydrogen-assisted cracking is anticipated by either a minimum waiting time (MWT, before non-destructive testing of the welded joint is allowed) at ambient or a hydrogen removal heat treatment (HRHT) at elevated temperatures. The effectiveness of both can be estimated by calculation of the diffusion time, i.e., diffusion coefficients. In this study, these coefficients are obtained for the first time for a thick-walled S420G2+M offshore steel grade and its multi-layer SAW joint. The electrochemical permeation technique at ambient temperature is used for the determination of diffusion coefficients for both the base material and the weld metal. The coefficients are within a range of 1025 to 1024 mm2/s (whereas the weld metal had the lowest) and are used for an analytical and numerical calculation of the hydrogen diffusion and the related MWT. The results showed that long MWT can occur, which would be necessary to significantly decrease the hydrogen concentration. Weld metal diffusion coefficients at elevated temperatures were calculated from hydrogen desorption experiments by carrier gas hot extraction. They are within a range of 1023 mm2/s and used for the characterization of a HRHT dwell-time. The analytical calculation shows the same tendency of long necessary times also at elevated temperatures. That means the necessary time is strongly influenced by the considered plate thickness and the estimation of any MWT/HRHT via diffusion coefficients should be critically discussed.
The increasing application of supermartensitic steels for welded pipelines is an economical alternative to the hitherto used higher-alloyed materials in the North Sea oil and gas indus-try. Failure in such constructions must at any rate be excluded for economical and ecologi-cal reasons. The application of these steels for the transport of corrosive mixtures may, however, involve hydrogen pickup with subsequent hydrogen-assisted stress corrosion cracking. It is therefore necessary not only to assure the weldability, but particularly to have best possible knowledge of the service behaviour and of the failure risk. In order to ensure the transferability of test results to real joined components, innovative test methods are in-creasingly required to be incorporated into a closed test sequence. It will be demonstrated how it is possible to gain significant advantages from the direct comparison between ex-perimentally determined results from component weld tests on the one hand and material-specific data from small-scale tests on the other hand and numerical simulations. These data that have now been made available are of major importance for industrial applications and are considered to provide a sound basis for realistic lifetime assessments.