McGill Hydrogen Embrittlement Facility

Beginning in 2006, McGill University’s hydrogen embrittlement facility (MHEF) conducts collaborative research in two distinct areas, notably: (i) fastener materials susceptibility, and (ii) interactions of fastener materials with coatings and coating processes. Partnership and growth - In 2002, Salim Brahimi brought the industrial problems of hydrogen embrittlement (HE) to Professor Stephen Yue, a 30-year veteran of McGill University (ex-Associate Dean, Faculty of Engineering; past Chairman Department of Mining and Materials Engineering; current Director of the McGill Institute for Aerospace Engineering). Brahimi was seeking a strong fundamental foundation on which to base industrial approaches to mitigating HE and funding mechanisms to achieve this goal. Over the course of a few years, a $350,000 NSERC CRD proposal was crafted and awarded in 2006. The main objective of this proposal was to implement a new test procedure known as incremental step loading (ISL) which would give a quantitative metric of HE. Brahimi had previously led an ASTM task group of experts that developed an ASTM standard, F1940 for quantifying the degree of hydrogen embrittlement by ISL. The success of this CRD led to more CRDs, Mitacs funding and industrial contracts, all totalling close to $1.5 million in funding; and the formation of the Facility. MHEF today - The core personnel, apart from Yue and Brahimi, includes Professor Jun Song, Dr. Sriraman Rajagopalan, and Dr. Evelin Barbosa de Melo. The MHEF currently has 18 industrial collaborators, including the Industrial Fasteners Institute (USA-Canada), the Canadian Fasteners Institute (Canada), Boeing (USA), Pratt and Whitney, Canada, and GM (USA). It also has research partnerships with CETIM (Centre Technique des Industries Mecaniques), a French Technical Center, the University of La Rochelle, LaSIE (France), McMaster University (Canada) and CanmetMATERIALS government laboratory (Canada).