Objectives

The primary objective of the proposed project is to provide the scientific basis for establishing a practical guideline with respect to HE assessment of both the existing components made of precipitation hardened nickel alloys and the promising strain hardened alloys for the subsea applications. The secondary objectives are 

• to probe the mechanisms of selected materials with representative microstructure under controlled hydrogen environment and well-defined loading conditions;
• to develop a unique mechanistic hydrogen failure model which represents the mechanisms in both in-service PHNA and alternative alloys, and implement it into a microstructure-informed predictive framework for the structural integrity assessment;
• to develop model-guided testing methods for retrieving the transferable model parameters to bridge the gap between accelerated lab conditions and realistic environments.