PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Šikyňa, Lukáš
AU  - Nový, František
AU  - Palček, Peter
AU  - Drímalová, Petra
AU  - Slezák, Martin
AU  - Uhríčik, Milan
AU  - Chvalníková, Veronika
TI  - Hydrogen Embrittlement of 11SMn30 Free-cutting Steel
DP  - 2023 Dec 22
TA  - Manufacturing Technology Journal
PG  - 900--908
VI  - 23
IP  - 6
AID - 10.21062/mft.2023.092
IS  - 12132489
AB  - The main objective of the work was to describe the laboratory methods suitable for hydrogenation of free-cutting steels and to study the hydrogen embrittlement of 11SMn30 free-cutting steel. Hydrogenation and subsequent mechanical testing of hydrogenated steel is not common laboratory method as it requires precise and expensive equipment, is time consuming and dangerous as hydrogen is highly reactive and explosive. Currently, there are several theories of hydrogen embrittlement mechanisms of steels that describe the causes of material degradation by hydrogen. However, those theories are not universally valid; individual accounts have been developed and describe hydrogen embrittlement only for specific conditions and may fail in their descriptions under others. In this work, the hydrogenation of free-cutting steel 11SMn30 steel by two different methods (immersion and ca-thodic) was investigated in order to induce embrittlement and to compare in particular the fracture surfaces after the Charpy impact test. The results reported in this paper indicate that manganese sulphide inclusions are not the main cause for hydrogen embrittlement in free-cutting steels. The effect of manganese sulphide inclusions was attributed only to hydrogen trapping, that generated a high stress causing their decohesion from the matrix.