Influence of the Die Bearing Length on the Hydrogen Embrittlement of Cold Drawn Wires

摘要

Prestressing steels, obtained by cold drawing, are highly susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement (HE) phenomena. Stress and strain fields produced by cold drawing play an essential role in this process since they affect hydrogen diffusion. Therefore, variations of such fields due to changes in drawing conditions could modify life in-service of these structural components. In this work the effect on HE of a parameter of the wire drawing process, the bearing length, is analyzed by means of diverse numerical simulations by the finite element method (FEM). The results of this work allow the definition of a characteristic value of the die bearing length equal to the wire radius, and demonstrate that the effects of stress-strain fields produced by wire drawing on HE are reduced when the bearing length exceeds such a characteristic value, so that the optimum cold drawing process is that with a bearing length higher than the wire radius.