Session Details

Session 2: Metal Finishing: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract Number:

25

It is of significant interest to heavy industries which rely on high ‎strength steels to understand which ‎process variables contribute ‎the highest risk to degradation modes such as hydrogen ‎‎embrittlement. Further, the cost of non-quality can be lowered by ‎understanding which variables ‎within a chemical process ‎contribute to these risks.‎

Topics:

Aerospace/Defense/Military

Hydrogen embrittlement is a degradation mechanism for high-‎strength steels from hydrogen ‎generated during certain processes. ‎The aerospace industry is highly concerned about this ‎‎phenomenon. The risks associated with this degradation ‎phenomenon are managed via empirical ‎methods such as baking ‎to relieve the hydrogen from the substrate, however, the exact ‎contributors ‎to hydrogen embrittlement within a chemical process ‎are not well understood. For example, within ‎any plating process, ‎hydrogen is generated in several of the cleaning baths as well as ‎the final plating ‎bath. Each bath's risk is, in turn, affected by ‎multiple sub-variables. This presentation summarizes ‎the work to ‎understand the key process variables which contribute to ‎hydrogen embrittlement ‎within a copper plating process and to ‎summarize the design of experiments which is intended to ‎‎uncover which of these variables is the highest contributor. ‎