HIGH-PERFORMANCE ALLOYS FOR CONVENTIONAL ICE AND HYDROGEN ICE APPLICATIONS

Currently, there are various development trends in conventional internal combustion engines (ICE) towards alternative concepts to save CO2 and improve the green footprint. One of these new solutions is the hydrogen internal combustion engine (HICE), which uses a concept with a similar engine design to burn hydrogen with oxygen to produce H(2)0 and thus generate energy. Such engines are currently being tested on various test rigs to determine their long-term behavior, generally using materials that have already been used for conventional ICEs. This raises the question of whether these materials can withstand the changed conditions inside and outside the combustion chamber. This is because the element hydrogen, due to its small size, can penetrate almost any material and significantly reduce the ductility. This behavior is denoted by hydrogen embrittlement and can cause dramatic fracture during material and/or component production as well as in the subsequent operation phase. The purpose of this paper is to present various high-performance alloys that have yielded technical advantages in conventional ICEs in previous research and are already used in various components in those vehicles. Based on these existing material concepts, investigations were carried out to test these materials for their suitability in hydrogen-rich atmospheres in order to have alternatives for the existing materials used in HICEs.