Hydrogen Transport and Cracking in Metals

The increasing economic pressure to reduce over-design and to extend service life while maintaining acceptable safety margins demands increased reliability in prediction of the performance and lifetime of fabricated structures, components such as valves, and other equipment exposed to hostile environments. Environment-assisted cracking of metals due to absorbed hydrogen has been a major cause of failure of components, structures, pipelines and pressure vessels with sometimes catastrophic results. This volume is based on a conference held at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK on 13-14 April 1994. It summarises the extensive research undertaken in Europe to quantify hydrogen uptake and transport in metals in laboratory and field situations and to improve understanding and prediction of cracking in service.