Abstract
Fracture behavior and fracture toughness are of great interest regarding reliability of hydrogen pipelines and storage tanks, however, many conventional fracture testing techniques are difficult to be realized under the presence of hydrogen, in addition to the inherited specimen size effect. Thus it is desired to develop novel in situ fracture toughness evaluation techniques to study the fracture behavior of structural materials in hydrogen environments. In this study, a torsional fixture was developed to utilize an emerging fracture testing technique, Spiral Notch Torsion Test (SNTT). The in situ testing results indicated that the exposure to H2 significantly reduces the fracture toughness of 4340 high strength steels by up to 50 percent. Furthermore, SNTT tests conducted in air demonstrated a significant fracture toughness reduction in samples subject to simulated welding heat treatment using Gleeble, which illustrated the effect of welding on the fracture toughness of this material.