Hydrogen permeation and diffusion in low-carbon steels and 16Mn steel

In the present work, the hydrogen permeation and diffusion in two low-carbon steels #10 and #20, and 16Mn steel over the temperature range of 80 to 330��C were investigated using gaseous permeation technique. The temperature dependence of hydrogen permeability, diffusivity and solubility for the three steels was obtained in the form of the Arrhenius equations. It was shown that the hydrogen permeability of the 16Mn steel is somewhat lower than that of the two low-carbon steels, whereas the hydrogen diffusivity is lowered in the order of #10, #20 and 16Mn but the activation energy of diffusion is much the same for the three steels. The difference in the diffusivity was attributed to the increase of ferrite-cementite interface areas with the refinement of pearlitic structure in the steels.