Anagrafe della ricerca

Advanced high strength steels and aluminum alloys allow to fabricate lighter car-bodies and therefore ultimately to reduce CO2 emissions. However, these alloys are prone to hydrogen embrittlement, which may occur during several production steps (e.g.: welding processes, electrochemical surface treatments), and may cause the delayed fracture of assembled components, even without relevant macroscopic stresses. Therefore, the project goal will be to analyze the hydrogen embrittlement phenomena in the above mentioned automotive alloys, and to develop a new application-specific test method to characterize the hydrogen embrittlement sensitivity of the same alloys for car-body construction.