Strength reduction of metals upon hydrogen chemisorption at the tip of a crack

When hydrogen interacts with the freshly formed surface, the interatomic bonds at the tip of a crack in the single crystal of a metal are known to break. The decrease in the brittle strength of the single crystals of metals in the presence of hydrogen in the crack compared with the strength of the same metal in the absence of hydrogen is estimated quantitatively using comparative criteria of brittle strength. Lavrent'ev Institute of Hydrodynamics, Siberian Division, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk 630090. Translated from Prikladnaya Mekhanika i Tekhnicheskaya Fizika, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 173–178, May–June, 1998.