Interpretation of thermal desorption spectra of hydrogen from aluminum using numerical simulation

Ebihara, Kenichi   ; Yamaguchi, Masatake   ; Tsuru, Tomohito   ; Itakura, Mitsuhiro  

Hydrogen embrittlement (HE) is considered as one cause of stress corrosion cracking. HE is a serious problem in the development of high strength aluminum alloy as with steels. For understanding HE, it is inevitable to know hydrogen trapping states in the alloys and it can be identified using thermal desorption spectrometry of H. In this study, we numerically simulated thermal desorption spectra of hydrogen in aluminum for a cylindrical and a plate specimens and interpreted the desorption peaks included in them on the basis of the trap site concentration and the trap energy. As a result, we found that the peak at the lowest-temperature side can result from grain boundaries and confirmed that the reported interpretation for other peaks is reasonable. We also obtained the result showing the possibility that the trap site concentration of defects changes during heating the specimens. This result may give a suggestion for the interpretation of temperature desorption spectra of steels.