A coupled fully kinetic hydrogen transport and ductile phase-field fracture framework for modeling hydrogen embrittlement

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive chemo-mechanical framework coupling hydrogen transport and phase-field fracture modeling to better understand hydrogen embrittlement, capturing key phenomena like crack initiation, propagation, and rate effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coupled kinetic transport and fracture model with a stress triaxiality-based driving force, advancing the simulation of hydrogen embrittlement mechanisms.

Findings

Predicts hydrogen-dependent damage shift from core to surface.

Shows hydrogen segregation at dislocations influences surface cracking.

Captures transition from ductile tearing to embrittlement with loading rate.

Abstract

Modeling hydrogen embrittlement (HE) is a long-standing engineering challenge, which has experienced significant developments in recent years. Yet, there is a gap in modeling the effect of the kinetics of hydrogen segregation at dislocations and the resulting interaction between ductile tearing and hydrogen-induced brittle fracture. In this work, a comprehensive chemo-mechanical framework is developed by coupling the fully kinetic hydrogen transport model with the geometric phase-field fracture method. A novel driving force is proposed that utilizes a hyperbolic tangent function of stress triaxiality to ensure that plastic dissipation contributes to fracture only under tensile conditions, phenomenologically representing void-driven ductile damage. The model successfully predicts the hydrogen-dependent shift in damage initiation from the specimen core to the surface. More importantly, hydrogen segregation at dislocations was shown to be crucial for modeling the multiple surface cracking experimentally observed at the necking region. Furthermore, the framework captures the competition between loading rates and diffusion kinetics, resolving the transition from multiple circumferential surface cracking at high strain rates to center-initiated single crack at lower rates. Finally, the model reproduced the experimental J-resistance curves for compact tension specimens, showing the transition from ductile tearing to embrittled crack.