Hydrogen-Induced Degradation of Metallic Materials—A Short Review

Hydrogen is currently used as an energy source, and there are already vehicles (cars and buses) that run on hydrogen in our public spaces. Additionally, in the chemical, petrochemical and nuclear industries, many devices come into contact with hydrogen. This short review covers a broad range of topics related to HE, i.e., the main hydrogen charging methods, aspects related to hydrogen diffusion in metallic materials, and the main models of hydrogen-induced material degradation and their assumptions, and discusses the influence of hydrogen on the properties and degradation of different metallic materials used in the industry based on the latest research results. This review focuses on the four primary groups of materials used in hydrogen devices, i.e., steels, aluminium alloys, nickel alloys and titanium alloys. The basic information on the influence of hydrogen on the structure and properties, mainly elongation, hardness and tensile strength, of these metallic material groups are presented. The influence of the method of hydrogen charging and the time of hydrogen saturation, as well as the effect of structure, on the content of hydrogen in the material, as well as on such material properties as hardness, tensile strength, and fatigue strength, is shown.