Dr. Brian Somerday has more than 25 years of experience in mechanical metallurgy with a focus on environmental effects on fatigue and fracture of structural metals. During careers at Sandia National Laboratories and Southwest Research Institute, his applied research activities were centered primarily on characterizing hydrogen embrittlement in a range of structural metals, including ferritic steels, austenitic steels, nickel alloys, and titanium alloys. His distinguishing expertise was applying fracture mechanics methods to measure fatigue and fracture properties of structural metals in gaseous and aqueous environments that promote hydrogen embrittlement. These data were intended to enable materials selection and structural integrity assessments for components subject to hydrogen embrittlement. Brian is currently a Materials Engineering Consultant with Somerday Consulting, LLC.

Brian has published extensively on the topic of hydrogen embrittlement of structural metals, including co-authoring the Technical Reference for Hydrogen Compatibility of Materials (www.sandia.gov/matlsTechRef/) and co-editing the two-volume set Gaseous Hydrogen Embrittlement of Materials in Energy Technologies (Woodhead Publishing, 2012).