Study of hydrogen effusion in austenitic stainless steel by time-resolved in-situ measurements using neutron radiography

The purpose of the present study was to show the feasibility of measuring hydrogen effusion in austenitic stainless steel (1.4301) using neutron radiography at the facility ANTARES of the research reactor FRM II of the Technische Universität München. This method is appropriate to measure in-situ hydrogen effusion for hydrogen concentrations as small as 20 ppmH. Experiments were carried out in the temperature range from room temperature up to 533 K. The measurement principle is based on the parallel comparison of electrochemically hydrogen charged specimen with hydrogen-free reference specimen at the same temperature. This allows the determination of the hydrogen concentration in the specimens as a function of time and temperature. Separate hot carrier gas extraction experiments using the same temperature–time profiles as the radiography experiments have been used to calibrate the grey values of the neutron transmission images into hydrogen concentrations. It can be stated that the hydrogen effusion correlates with the specimen temperature.