Component Dimensioning in Hydrogen Environment

For the ongoing energy transition, high pressure hydrogen is a highly relevant energy carrier. In order to provide a practical and robust hydrogen infrastructure, a vast variety of components needs to be developed to ensure a save hydrogen storage and transport. Dimensioning of these parts with respect to their structural durability requires new dimensioning schemes and guidelines to be developed which account for material specific damage mechanisms under hydrogen environment. An ideal basis represents the well-established FKM guideline issued by the German Research Association Mechanical Engineering (FKM). The guideline is applicable for a wide range of mechanical engineering components and is particularly popular for small and medium enterprises. Within this work, the dimensioning scheme based on FKM guideline is applied for exemplary structural parts in hydrogen environment. Based on literature data and experiments conducted within the project, the fatigue strength assessment scheme acc. to the FKM guideline is modified and finally used for the assessment of a sample component from austenitic stainless steel. In our work, we analyze the applicability of the guidelines based on this dimensioning use case and discuss how the FKM approach needs to be adapted to consider the hydrogen effects on a general basis.