Modeling hydrogen transport by dislocations

Recent experimental studies of the microstructure beneath fracture surfaces of specimens fractured in the presence of high concentrations of hydrogen suggest that the dislocation structure and hydrogen transported by mobile dislocations play important roles in establishing the local conditions that promote failure. The experiments demonstrate that hydrogen is responsible for the copious plasticity in large volumes of material before the onset of fracture and further afield from a crack tip. A revised model for hydrogen transport that accounts for hydrogen carried by dislocations along with stress driven diffusion and trapping at other microstructural defects is proposed. With the use of this new model, numerical simulation results for transient hydrogen profiles in the neighborhood of a crack tip are presented. Based on hydrogen-enhanced dislocation mobility and density, the results indicate that dislocation transport can contribute to the elevation of the local hydrogen concentrations ahead of the crack to levels above those predicted by the classical diffusion model and to distributions that extend farther afield.