SIMPLE MECHANICAL TESTING METHOD TO EVALUATE INFLUENCE OF HIGH PRESSURE HYDROGEN GAS

A simple testing method to evaluate the influence of high pressure hydrogen gas up to 100 MPa on mechanical properties at the temperature between 20 K and up to 800 K had been developed. In this method, instead of using high-pressure gas vessels, high pressure gas was filled into a small hole in the hollow-type test piece from a hydrogen gas cylinder or a compressor for 10 MPa or 100 MPa test. A small inner diameter of the hole enables to evaluate also the reduction of area in the slow strain-rate tensile (SSRT) tests. The temperature of the test piece with the high pressure gas can be changed simply by surrounding coolant or heater between 20 K and 800 K. Lots of test results by this method proved that almost the same results were obtained between this method and the conventional method with high-pressure gas vessels where test piece is installed. The great advantages of this method are not only the less cost for the facilities of high-pressure vessels but also the ability of tests at lower or higher temperatures than those with the vessels. So, this method is proposed to be used world widely to evaluate the mechanical properties of structural materials for extremely severe environments, such as high-pressure hydrogen applications and also to study the mechanism of the influence of high-pressure hydrogen for design and reliability of those facilities. In this paper, the details of testing procedure of this method and results of tensile and fatigue tests in up to 70 MPa hydrogen gas on several kinds of stainless steels obtained by this method are presented.