Abstract
For the corrosion protection of the natural gas transmission pipelines, two methods are used, cathodic protection and coating technique. In the case of cathodic protection, defects are embrittled by occurring hydrogen at the crack tip or material surface. It is however very important to evaluate whether cracks in the embrittled area can grow or not, especially in weld metal. In this work, on the basis of elastic plastic fracture mechanics, we performed the CTOD testing with various test conditions, such as testing rate and potential. The CTOD of the base metal and the weld metal showed a strong dependence of the test conditions. The CTOD decreased with decreasing testing rate and with increasing cathodic potential. The morphology of the fracture surface showed the quasi-cleavage at low testing rate and cathodic overprotection. The low CTOD was caused by hydrogen embrittlement at crack tip.
