Abstract
High strength steel sheets used for automobile outer-panels have been intensively studied for developing a lightweight automobile under a strong pressure of the requirements for enhancing the mileage and energy saving in production of automobile parts. It is known that high strength steels are susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement, The susceptibility to hydrogen embrittlement increases with increasing its strength. However, the effect of hydrogen on the fracture behavior of high strength steels, though investigated extensively, has not been fully understood. In this paper, hydrogen was charged with 590DP steels by electrochemical method and its content was measured by hydrogen determinator with the different charging conditions. It was shown that the SP energy and maximum load decreased with increasing charging time. The results of SEM-fractography investigation for the hydrogen contained samples showed that a small portion of dimples on cleavage-fractured surface were observed and the size of the dimples were decreased with increasing hydrogen charging time.