NMX‑HEM‑30 / Rev 00 / materials testing / embrittlement · SSRT · in-situ 2026 · Product Page

NMX-HEM-30 · ENGINEERED TO ORDER — HYDROGEN EMBRITTLEMENT TEST SYSTEMS

The smallest atom. The quietest failure.

Name: Hydrogen Embrittlement Test System
Brand: Neometrix

Hydrogen is small enough to dissolve into steel itself — picked up in the plating bath or straight from the gas — where it gathers at notches and threads and causes engineering’s quietest failure: delayed fracture, the part that passes every inspection and breaks under steady load days later. These machines force that failure onto a bench, on a schedule. Sustained-load banks to the ASTM F519 pattern prove every plating bake, station by station, over the standard’s 200-hour class holds. Slow-strain-rate frames pull for days and put a number on the damage. And in-situ autoclave systems load specimens in hydrogen at hundreds of bar — the G142-pattern qualification the hydrogen economy’s pipes, valves and vessels are built on — with the safety discipline of our delivered high-pressure hydrogen family. Engineered to order — no delivered system is claimed.

Enquire — embrittlement testing Capability sheet (PDF)

Illustrative image, not a delivered system — a multi-station sustained-load hydrogen embrittlement test bank: a row of identical grey vertical lever-arm stations, each gripping a slender notched steel specimen with a stack of circular dead weights hanging below, one blank round dial per station, clean laboratory floor, no people and no text

Fig · 01 The sustained-load bank — a row of quiet stations, each holding a specimen against the clock — illustrative, not a delivered system

Patterns

F519 · G129 · G142the public triad

Hold

200 h classsustained load, per-station

Pull

10⁻⁶ /s classdays-long SSRT

In-situ

HP hydrogenhundreds of bar, in the gas

Built

to orderinstall · verify · AMC

ISO 9001 / 14001 Engineered to order ASTM-pattern machines Materials-testing house Noida · India

Overview

Strong parts, failing quietly — days after every test passed.

Most failures announce themselves. Hydrogen embrittlement does not. The atom is small enough to dissolve into the metal lattice and move through it; in high-strength steel it drifts to wherever stress concentrates — notches, threads, the hardest microstructures — and there it lowers the metal’s tolerance for its own load. The result is delayed fracture: a part that measures perfect, passes inspection, enters service — and breaks under a steady load it had carried without complaint, days or weeks later. Aerospace learned this from plated parts and wrote the lesson into a testing tradition; the hydrogen economy, which proposes to soak entire pipe networks in the gas, is learning it now.

Illustrative image, not a delivered system — a slow-strain-rate testing frame: a stiff two-column screw-driven load frame with a precision gearbox drive at the top crosshead, a slender specimen held in grips inside a clear glass environmental cell at mid-height, fine tubing to the cell, a grey control cabinet with one blank dark screen beside it, clean laboratory setting, no people and no text

Fig · 02 The SSRT frame — a pull so slow the test takes days, because that is the speed at which hydrogen does its work — illustrative, not a delivered system

The sustained-load bank is the process shop’s proof. Electroplating and pickling charge hydrogen into high-strength parts; a baking cycle drives it out; and the F519-pattern test proves the bake actually worked. Notched specimens, plated alongside the production batch, are loaded to a high fraction of their notched strength and simply held — the 200-hour class in the classic pattern — on banks of identical stations with dead-weight or spring loading, per-station break detection and timers. Survive, and the batch’s processing passed. Fracture, and a bad bath or a skipped bake has been caught before its parts fly.

The SSRT frame is the laboratory’s ruler. Hydrogen needs time to move to a crack tip, so a fast tensile test hides the damage. The slow-strain-rate machine removes the hiding place: a stiff, screw-driven frame pulls the specimen at rates in the 10⁻⁶ per second class — a single test runs for days — inside an environmental cell, and the ductility measured there is indexed against an identical pull in air. The ratio is the embrittlement index: a number that ranks alloys, coatings, inhibitors and processes against one another.

The in-situ autoclave qualifies the hydrogen economy. For pipes, valves and vessels that will live in the gas, the honest test loads the specimen in the gas: a thick-walled autoclave holding hydrogen at hundreds of bar, the specimen gripped through a friction-sealed pull-rod, driven in tension, slow strain or fatigue to the G142 pattern — because steels lose fatigue life in hydrogen, and the deficit must be measured, not estimated. The gas handling, the cells and the detection-and-inertisation safety case come straight from our delivered high-pressure hydrogen family.

The discipline in one sentence: hydrogen’s failure is quiet, delayed and invisible to ordinary tests — so these machines give it exactly what it needs, time and load, and force it to happen where it costs a specimen instead of a structure.

Delayed Fracture

The failure that waits

Parts pass every ordinary inspection, then break under steady load, days later. The test’s whole job is to make that quiet failure loud, on the bench, on record.

One Discipline, Three Machines

Hold, pull, qualify

Sustained-load banks prove processes; SSRT frames measure and rank; in-situ autoclaves qualify hydrogen-service equipment — one materials discipline, three instruments.

The Hydrogen House

The materials wing

Beside the delivered burst, leak and component machines and the cycling facility — this page is the hydrogen family’s materials laboratory, built on the same HP-gas discipline.

Architecture

Hold, pull, qualify.

The schematic follows the threat — hydrogen gets in, gathers, waits, and is caught here — and shows the machines that catch it: the sustained-load banks, the SSRT frames, the in-situ autoclaves, and the records and safety around them.

FIG · 03HEM ARCHITECTURE · SUSTAINED-LOAD BANKS / SSRT FRAMES / HP-H2 AUTOCLAVES · RECORDS & SAFETY

Fig · 03 The quiet failure, made loud — under load, on record, before the part ever carries anything real

Arc · 01

Sustained-Load Banks

Multi-station F519-pattern rigs — lever / dead-weight or spring loading, notched-specimen fixtures, per-station break detection and timers, 200-hour-class holds.

Arc · 02

SSRT Frames

Stiff screw-driven frames at 10⁻⁶ /s-class rates — precision slow drives, load cells, extensometry, environmental cells — ductility indexed against air.

Arc · 03

In-Situ HP-H2 Autoclaves

Thick-walled vessels with sealed pull-rods — tensile, slow-strain and fatigue in hydrogen at hundreds of bar, to the G142 pattern.

Arc · 04

Records & Safety

Per-station logs and break events an auditor can sign — and for the autoclaves, the cell, detection and inertisation discipline of the delivered hydrogen family.

Have an embrittlement-testing, SSRT or hydrogen-qualification requirement? Send the specimens, the standards and the environments — a clause-by-clause compliance matrix within two working days · [email protected]

Send tender spec

Specifications

Reference system, built to the standard.

The parameters below describe a reference installation. The station count, load ranges, environments and autoclave rating all follow from three givens: the specimens, the standards they certify to, and the throughput the laboratory needs.

Illustrative image, not a delivered system — an in-situ high-pressure hydrogen materials test rig: a thick-walled polished stainless autoclave mounted between the columns of a grey load frame, a slender pull-rod entering through a gland in the autoclave's top closure, fine stainless high-pressure lines with two hand valves, a small manifold on the frame column, clean laboratory floor, no people and no text

Fig · 04 The in-situ rig — the specimen loaded through a sealed pull-rod, inside the gas itself — illustrative, not a delivered system

Where embrittlement testing goes wrong

In the patience and the fixtures, not the loads. A sustained-load station that relaxes over its 200 hours quietly changes the test’s meaning; a notch cut off-drawing moves the stress the whole method depends on; an SSRT drive with backlash turns a 10⁻⁶-per-second pull into a jittery approximation; a pull-rod seal that leaks turns an in-situ test into an in-air one without telling anyone; and records kept loosely turn weeks of testing into results an auditor cannot accept.

So the stations hold load through lever geometry and spring stiffness chosen for constancy, checked by per-station verification; the notched fixtures are made and gauged to the standards’ drawings; the slow drives are backlash-managed and speed-verified across the full range; the autoclave glands are engineered and leak-watched so the environment is what the certificate says it is; and every station keeps its own log, break event and timeline — because in a discipline built on delayed failure, the record is the product.

Full specification — expand

System	Hydrogen embrittlement test system — sustained-load banks, SSRT frames, in-situ HP-hydrogen autoclaves, fixtures & records; engineered, built, installed, verified & supported
Function	Forces delayed fracture to happen on a bench, on a schedule — proving processes, ranking materials, qualifying hydrogen-service equipment
Sustained-Load Banks	Multi-station ASTM F519-pattern rigs — notched specimens at a high fraction of notched strength, 200 h-class holds; lever / dead-weight or spring loading; per-station break detection & timers
SSRT Frames	ASTM G129-pattern screw-driven frames — strain rates in the 10⁻⁶ /s class, days-long pulls; load cells, extensometry, environmental cells; ductility indexed against air
In-Situ Autoclaves	ASTM G142-pattern thick-walled vessels — sealed pull-rods, hydrogen at hundreds of bar; tensile, slow-strain & fatigue in the gas; gas handling on the delivered HP-hydrogen discipline
Fixtures	Notched-specimen fixtures to the standards’ drawings — made, gauged & wear-watched; grips, clevises & alignment checked; fixtures for new geometries through life
Environments	Air, aqueous cells, and high-pressure hydrogen — with gland leak-watching so the environment is what the certificate says
Records	Per-station logs, break events & timelines; load-verification records; reference-specimen checks — in a delayed-failure discipline, the record is the product
Safety	Autoclave systems inside the cell, hydrogen-detection & nitrogen-inertisation discipline of the delivered HP-hydrogen family; stored energy contained; interlocked access
Verification	Load & rate verification across the range; fixture gauging; reference specimens; at installation & on the calibration calendar
Service	Calibration programmes, fixtures for new specimen geometries, seals & wear parts, AMC through life
Sourcing	Reference specimens, load cells & proprietary sensors are bought-in certified items; Neometrix engineers the frames, stations, fixtures, autoclaves, gas handling, instrumentation & controls
Status	Engineered to order · quoted against a hydrogen de-embrittlement test-equipment requirement · grounded in the delivered fatigue, materials-testing, autoclave & HP-hydrogen franchises · no specific delivered system is claimed on this page

PDF · 1 page

Hydrogen Embrittlement Testing — Capability Sheet

Tender Response

Send specimens, standards & environments — compliance matrix in two working days

Variants

One discipline, the machine the question needs.

Requirements call it de-embrittlement test equipment, an SSRT machine, a hydrogen-compatibility rig, or a materials-qualification laboratory. The discipline — time plus load, honestly recorded — is common; the machine follows the question being asked.

Var · 01

Sustained-Load Banks

F519-pattern multi-station rigs for plating and process QA — from compact four-station benches to full laboratory walls of stations, each on its own clock.

Var · 02

SSRT Machines

G129-pattern frames with precision slow drives and environmental cells — the measuring instrument for ranking alloys, coatings and processes.

Var · 03

In-Situ HP-H2 Systems

G142-pattern autoclave rigs — tensile, slow-strain and fatigue in hydrogen at hundreds of bar, with the delivered family’s gas handling and safety case.

Var · 04

Fixtures, Verification & AMC

Notched fixtures to the standards’ drawings, load and rate verification, reference-specimen programmes and support through the laboratory’s life.

Applications

Where the quiet failure gets caught.

Wherever high-strength parts meet hydrogen — in the process shop or in the gas itself.

A · 01Aerospace plating & process-QA shops

A · 02Fastener, landing-gear & high-strength-part makers

A · 03Hydrogen pipeline, valve & vessel qualification

A · 04Green-hydrogen equipment programmes

A · 05Research institutes & materials laboratories

A · 06Defence QA & airworthiness laboratories

FAQ

Common questions.

Plain-language answers from the engineering team.

Q · 01 What is hydrogen embrittlement — and why is the failure delayed?

It is what happens when the smallest atom in existence takes up residence inside a metal. Hydrogen atoms are small enough to dissolve into the crystal lattice of steel and diffuse through it — not sitting on the surface, but moving within the solid itself. In high-strength steels they migrate toward wherever stress is concentrated — notch roots, thread roots, crack tips, hard microstructures — and there they interfere with the metal’s ability to deform gracefully, lowering the stress at which a crack can form and grow. The failure is delayed because the mechanism needs time: the hydrogen must diffuse to the critical spot, accumulate, and only then does a crack initiate and creep — often under a perfectly steady load that the part had been carrying without complaint. That is what makes it engineering’s quietest failure: there is no warning, no bulge, no visible flaw — a part passes dimensional inspection, hardness checks and even proof loading, goes into service, and breaks days or weeks later. The only defence is to give hydrogen exactly what it needs — time under load — in a place where failure is cheap: the test bench.

Q · 02 How does the F519-pattern sustained-load test prove a plating process?

By sacrificing specimens that lived through everything the parts did. Electroplating and acid pickling are notorious hydrogen sources — the electrochemistry that deposits the coating also charges hydrogen into the steel beneath — which is why high-strength parts are baked after plating, holding them at temperature for hours so the hydrogen diffuses back out. But a bake can be shortened, a bath can drift, an oven can run cool — and nothing about the part will show it. So the F519 tradition sends witnesses through the process: notched specimens of defined steel, geometry and strength, plated and baked alongside the production batch, then mounted in the bank and loaded to a high fraction of their notched tensile strength — and simply held there, for the standard’s duration, the 200-hour class in the classic method. A specimen that survives its hold proves the batch’s processing left too little hydrogen to matter. A specimen that breaks — and the bank’s per-station detection timestamps the moment — convicts the batch before a single part reaches an aircraft. The machine itself is deliberately simple: lever arms, dead weights or calibrated springs, engineered for one virtue above all — holding exactly the same load, patiently, for days.

Q · 03 What does slow-strain-rate testing measure that a normal tensile test cannot?

The damage that only shows up when the test is slow enough for hydrogen to keep pace. In an ordinary tensile test the specimen is pulled to failure in minutes — far too fast for hydrogen to diffuse to the deforming regions and participate — so an embrittled specimen can post nearly normal numbers. The slow-strain-rate machine removes that escape: it pulls at rates in the 10⁻⁶-per-second class, a thousand times slower, so a single test runs for days — slow enough that the hydrogen travels with the deformation and does its worst. Run the same pull twice — once in the environment of interest (an aqueous cell, a charged specimen, or hydrogen gas) and once in air — and the comparison becomes a number: ductility in-environment over ductility in air, the embrittlement index. With it, a laboratory can rank alloys against each other, coatings against coatings, inhibitors against nothing — the measuring instrument of the discipline. The machine’s craft is entirely in the patience: a stiff frame so the specimen sees the motion, a backlash-managed precision drive that is genuinely steady at glacial speed, and instrumentation content to log faithfully for a week.

Q · 04 Why test inside high-pressure hydrogen — is charged-specimen testing not enough?

Because the hydrogen economy’s equipment will not live next to hydrogen — it will live in it, and the honest test recreates exactly that. Pre-charging a specimen with hydrogen and testing it in air is useful but approximate: the hydrogen begins leaving the moment charging stops, and the concentration during the test is falling and uncertain. The G142-pattern rig removes the approximation by putting the whole test inside the gas: a thick-walled autoclave filled with hydrogen at hundreds of bar — the pressures of storage, pipelines and refuelling — with the specimen gripped through a friction-sealed pull-rod that lets the load frame outside drive tension, slow strain or cyclic fatigue inside. Fatigue matters most: steels that shrug at hydrogen in a static test can lose a large fraction of their fatigue life in the gas, and pipelines and vessels live by their fatigue life. This is how hydrogen-service materials, welds, valves and fittings are actually qualified. The engineering around it is our home ground: the autoclave and its glands, the gas handling on the delivered HP-hydrogen discipline, and the cell, detection and inertisation safety case shared with our cycling facility — with gland leak-watching so the environment is provably what the certificate claims.

Q · 05 How is the system kept honest through days-long tests?

By accepting that in this discipline, the record is the product. Every result these machines produce is a claim about time — held for 200 hours, pulled for five days, cycled in gas for a week — and a claim about time is only as good as its log. So each sustained-load station keeps its own timeline: load applied, load verified, hold begun, and a break event timestamped by its own detector, so a fracture at hour 187 of a 200-hour hold is a fact, not a recollection. Loads are verified per station — lever geometry and spring stiffness are chosen for constancy, then checked, because a station that relaxes quietly rewrites the test’s meaning. The notched fixtures — on which the entire stress state of the method depends — are made and gauged to the standards’ drawings and watched for wear. SSRT drives are speed-verified across the range, since the rate is the method. Autoclave glands are leak-watched so an in-situ test cannot silently become an in-air one. And all of it runs on the verification habits of our materials-testing line — reference checks at installation and on the calibration calendar — so that what the laboratory signs, an auditor can accept.

Q · 06 What do you build, and what is bought-in?

We build the system as a laboratory, from franchises we have delivered. What Neometrix does: the sustained-load banks — station frames, lever and spring loading, notched-specimen fixtures to the standards’ drawings, per-station detection, timers and logging; the SSRT frames — stiff columns, backlash-managed precision slow drives, grips and alignment, environmental cells and instrumentation; the in-situ autoclave systems — thick-walled vessels and their sealed pull-rod glands, load-frame integration, and the hydrogen gas handling, cells, detection and inertisation carried over from our delivered high-pressure hydrogen family; the controls and records — per-station logs, break events, rate and load verification trails; and the installation, verification, calibration programmes, fixtures for new geometries and AMC through the laboratory’s life. What is bought-in certified: reference specimens with their certificates, load cells and extensometers, proprietary sensors and gas-detection heads, and relief devices with their approvals. Engineered to order; quoted against a hydrogen de-embrittlement test-equipment requirement; grounded in the delivered fatigue, materials-testing, autoclave and HP-hydrogen franchises; no specific delivered system is claimed on this page.

↗

The materials & hydrogen lines from Neometrix.

The impact machine that asks in milliseconds what this one asks over days, the HP-hydrogen family whose safety case this page shares, and the fatigue house behind the loading — engineered at our Noida facility.

↗ Materials Testing

Materials Impact Testing Machine

One blow in milliseconds, or one hold over days — two ways of asking a material the truth.

↗ HP-Hydrogen Family

Hydrogen Pressure-Cycling Test Facility

The tanks’ lifetime, proven — the same gas handling and safety case as this page’s autoclaves.

↗ Fatigue House

Servo-Hydraulic Fatigue Testing Machine

The loading discipline behind the in-situ rigs — fatigue, here run inside the gas.

Browse all Neometrix product lines.

Get a quotation

Send the specimens
and the standards.

The defence programmes desk replies within two working days with a clause-by-clause compliance matrix and a budgetary quotation. Write to [email protected] or use the form.

Enquire — embrittlement testing Capability sheet (PDF) +91 7777 876 876

ISO 9001 / 14001 ENGINEERED TO ORDER — HYDROGEN EMBRITTLEMENT TEST SYSTEMS SUSTAINED-LOAD BANKS (F519) · SSRT FRAMES (G129) · IN-SITU HP-H2 AUTOCLAVES (G142) · VERIFICATION & AMC ENGINEERED IN NOIDA · INDIA

The smallest atom. The quietest failure.

Strong parts, failing quietly — days after every test passed.

The failure that waits

Hold, pull, qualify

The materials wing

Hold, pull, qualify.

Sustained-Load Banks

SSRT Frames

In-Situ HP-H2 Autoclaves

Records & Safety

Reference system, built to the standard.

Where embrittlement testing goes wrong

One discipline, the machine the question needs.

Sustained-Load Banks

SSRT Machines

In-Situ HP-H2 Systems

Fixtures, Verification & AMC

Where the quiet failure gets caught.

Common questions.

The materials & hydrogen lines from Neometrix.

Materials Impact Testing Machine

Hydrogen Pressure-Cycling Test Facility

Servo-Hydraulic Fatigue Testing Machine

Send the specimens
and the standards.

Similar Products

Share This Page

The smallest atom. The quietest failure.

Strong parts, failing quietly — days after every test passed.

The failure that waits

Hold, pull, qualify

The materials wing

Hold, pull, qualify.

Sustained-Load Banks

SSRT Frames

In-Situ HP-H2 Autoclaves

Records & Safety

Reference system, built to the standard.

Where embrittlement testing goes wrong

One discipline, the machine the question needs.

Sustained-Load Banks

SSRT Machines

In-Situ HP-H2 Systems

Fixtures, Verification & AMC

Where the quiet failure gets caught.

Common questions.

The materials & hydrogen lines from Neometrix.

Materials Impact Testing Machine

Hydrogen Pressure-Cycling Test Facility

Servo-Hydraulic Fatigue Testing Machine

Send the specimensand the standards.

Similar Products

Share This Page

Send the specimens
and the standards.