Fracture toughness of the hydrogen charged EUROFER 97 RAFM steel at room temperature and 120°C

Abstract The static fracture toughness of EUROFER 97 reduced activation ferritic-martensitic steel was investigated in presence of higher content of hydrogen. The hydrogen effect is shown during fracture toughness testing both of base and weld metals at room temperature and at 120 °C. At the room temperature testing the J 0.2 integral values will decrease depending on hydrogen content in the range of 2–4 wppm. The same hydrogen content of 2 wppm manifests itself by an uneven level of hydrogen embrittlement for base metal and weld metal. This corresponds to a different J 0.2 integral value and a different mechanism of fracture mode. At the hydrogen content of 4 wppm more evident decrease of J 0.2 was observed for both metals. At 120 °C hydrogen decreases J 0.2 integral in base metal at a limited scale only in comparison to weld metal. At room temperature and hydrogen content of about 4 wppm the base metal specimen exhibits inter-granular fracture and trans-granular cleavage on practically the whole crack surface. The weld metal fracture has shown inter-granular and trans-granular mechanism with ductile and dimple rupture.