Hydrogen-enhanced fatigue of a Cr-Mo steel pressure vessel

The current international standards and codes dedicated to the design of pressure vessels do not properly ensure fitness for service of vessels used for gaseous hydrogen storage and subjected to hydrogen enhanced fatigue. In this context, the European project MATHRYCE intends to propose an easy to implement vessel design methodology based on lab-scale tests and taking into account hydrogen enhanced fatigue.In the present document the lab-scale experimental developments and results are presented. The material considered was a commercially available Q&T low alloy Cr-Mo steel from a seamless pressure vessel. Due to the high hydrogen diffusion at room temperature in such steel, all the tests were performed under hydrogen pressure to avoid outgassing. Different types of lab-scale tests were developed and used in order to identify the most promising one for a design code. The effect of mechanical parameters, such as H2 pressure, frequency and ΔK, on fatigue crack initiation and propagation was analyzed. In particular, special attention was paid on the influence of H2 on the relative parts of initiation and propagation in the fatigue life of a component.The second part of the work was dedicated to cyclic hydraulic and hydrogen pressure tests on full scale vessels. Three artificial defects with different geometries per cylinder were machined in the inner wall of each tested cylinder. They were specifically designed in order to detect fatigue crack initiation and fatigue crack propagation with a single test.The final goal of this work is to propose a methodology to derive a “hydrogen safety factor” from lab-scale tests. The proposed method is compared to the full-scale results obtained, leading to recommendations on the design of pressure components operating under cyclic hydrogen pressure.Copyright © 2015 by ASME