scholarly journals Biaxial loading and shallow-flaw effects on crack-tip constraint and fracture toughness

1994 ◽  
Author(s):  
B.R. Bass ◽  
J.W. Bryson ◽  
T.J. Theiss ◽  
M.C. Rao
2000 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wallace J. McAfee ◽  
B. Richard Bass ◽  
Paul T. Williams

A technology to determine shallow-flaw fracture toughness of reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steels is being developed. This technology is for application to the safety assessment of RPVs containing postulated shallow-surface flaws. It has been shown that relaxation of crack-tip constraint causes shallow-flaw fracture toughness of RPV material to have a higher mean value than that for deep flaws in the lower transition temperature region. Cruciform beam specimens developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) introduce far-field, out-of-plane biaxial stress components in the test section that approximates the nonlinear stresses resulting from pressurized-thermal-shock (PTS) loading of an RPV. The biaxial stress component has been shown to increase stress triaxiality (constraint) at the crack tip, and thereby reduce the shallow-flaw fracture toughness enhancement. The cruciform specimen permits controlled application of biaxial loading ratios, resulting in controlled variation of crack-tip constraint. An extensive matrix of intermediate-scale cruciform specimens with a uniform depth surface flaw was previously tested and demonstrated a continued decrease in shallow-flaw fracture toughness with increasing biaxial loading. This paper describes the test results for a series of large-scale cruciform specimens with a uniform depth surface flaw. These specimens were all of the same size with the same depth flaw and were tested at the same temperature and biaxial load ratio (1:1). The configuration is the same as the previous set of intermediate-scale tests, but has been scaled upward in size by 150 percent. These tests demonstrated the effect of biaxial loading and specimen size on shallow-flaw fracture toughness in the lower transition temperature region for RPV materials. For specimens tested under full biaxial (1:1) loading at test temperatures in the range of 23°F (−5°C) to 34°F (1°C), toughness was reduced by approximately 15 percent for a 150-percent increase in specimen size. This decrease was slightly greater than the predicted reduction for this increase in specimen size. The size corrections for 1/2T C(T) specimens did not predict the experimentally determined mean toughness values for larger size shallow-flaw specimens tested under biaxial (1:1) loading in the lower transition temperature region.


Author(s):  
Dieter Siegele ◽  
Igor Varfolomeyev ◽  
Kim Wallin ◽  
Gerhard Nagel

Within the framework of the European research project VOCALIST, centre cracked tension, CC(T), specimens made of an RPV steel were tested and analysed to quantify the influence of local stress state on fracture toughness. The CC(T) specimens demonstrate a significant loss of crack tip constraint resulting in a considerable increase in fracture toughness as compared to standard fracture mechanics specimens. So, the master curve reference temperature, To, determined on the basis of CC(T) tests performed in this study is about 43°C lower than To obtained on standard C(T) specimens. Finite element analyses of the tests revealed that the above experimental finding is in a good agreement with the empirical correlations between the reference temperature shift and the crack tip constraint as characterised by the T-stress or Q parameter (Wallin, 2001; Wallin, 2004). The results of this work are consistent with a number of other tests performed within the VOCALIST project and contribute to the validation of engineering methods for the crack assessment in components taking account of constraint.


2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nam-Su Huh ◽  
Yun-Jae Kim ◽  
Jae-Boong Choi ◽  
Young-Jin Kim ◽  
Chang-Ryul Pyo

One important element of the Leak-Before-Break analysis of nuclear piping is how to determine relevant fracture toughness (or the J-resistance curve) for nonlinear fracture mechanics analysis. The practice to use fracture toughness from a standard C(T) specimen is known to often give conservative estimates of toughness. To improve the accuracy of predicting piping failure, this paper proposes a new method to determine fracture toughness using a nonstandard testing specimen, curved wide-plate in tension. To show validity of the proposed curved wide-plate test, the J-resistance curve from the full-scale pipe test is compared with that from the curved wide-plate test and that from C(T) specimen. It is shown that the J-resistance curve from the curved wide-plate tension test is similar to, but that from the C(T) specimen is lower than, the J-resistance curve from the full-scale pipe test. Further validation is performed by investigating crack-tip constraint conditions via detailed three-dimensional finite element analyses, which shows that the crack-tip constraint condition in the curved wide-plate tension specimen is indeed similar to that in the full-scale pipe under bending.


2011 ◽  
Vol 197-198 ◽  
pp. 1595-1598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Xu ◽  
Yu Fan

This paper studies the effects of temperature and crack tip constraint on cleavage fracture toughness of the weld thermal simulated X80 pipeline steels. A large number of fracture toughness (as denoted by CTOD) tests together with 3D finite element analysis are performed using single edge notched bending (SENB) and tension (SENT) specimens at different temperatures. Coarse-grained heat-affected zone (CGHAZ) is considered as the material microstructure in preparation of the weld thermal simulated fracture mechanics specimens.


Author(s):  
J. F. Zarzour ◽  
Y. Dah-Wei ◽  
M. J. Kleinosky

Abstract Single edge notched bars (SENB), in the bending mode, with a/W ratios ranging from 0.05 to 0.5 were examined for fracture toughness in terms of the J-integral approach. The results indicate that for a/W ratios less than 0.3, there is a significant loss of J-dominance. This loss is attributed to the effect of plastic deformation on the cracked face. For a/W ratios greater than 0.3, J-dominance is maintained into the large scale yielding regime. According to the recently developed two-parameter criterion (J,Q), compressive Q-stress was interpreted as an indication of low crack-tip stress triaxiality for shallow cracks, while positive Q-stress was associated with high crack-tip stress triaxiality for deep cracks. For the material properties and specimen geometries considered herein, a fracture toughness locus was constructed in terms of the (J,Q) parameters for each of the a/W ratios. The overall fracture data are in agreement with those predicted by other approaches and provide a rigorous framework for interpreting the effect of loss of crack-tip constraint in elastic-plastic fracture analyses.


Author(s):  
Sebastian Cravero ◽  
Richard E. Bravo ◽  
Hugo A. Ernst

Under certain conditions, pipelines may be submitted to biaxial loading situations. In these cases, questions arise about how biaxial loading influence the driving force (i.e.: CTOD, J-integral) of possible presented cracks and how affects the material fracture toughness. For further understanding of biaxial loading effects on fracture mechanics behavior of cracked pipelines, this work presents a numerical analysis of crack-tip constraint of circumferentially surface cracked pipes and SENT specimens using full 3D nonlinear computations. The objective is to examine combined loading effects on the correlation of fracture behavior for the analyzed cracked configurations. The constraint study using the J-Q methodology and the h parameter gives information about the fracture specimen that best represents the crack-tip conditions on circumferentially flawed pipes under combined loads. Additionally, simulations of ductile tearing in a surface cracked plate under biaxial loading using the computational cell methodology demonstrate the negligible effect of biaxial loadings on resistance curves.


Author(s):  
Zhongxian Wang ◽  
Yan-qing Zhang ◽  
Poh-Sang Lam ◽  
Yuh J. Chao

Typical pressure vessels are subject to biaxial loading. Creep analysis was conducted with two-dimensional finite element method for a center-cracked plate under a range of biaxial loading ratios (λ = −1, 0, and 0.5). The effects of crack size and the biaxial loading ratio on the crack tip field are reported. In addition, based on a two-parameter fracture theory, C(t)−A2(t), where C is a contour integral and is path-independent when the steady state creep is reached (denoted by C*), and A2 is a time dependent crack tip constraint parameter. The crack tip stress field calculated from the C(t)−A2(t) theory is shown to be more accurate than the Hutchinson–Rice–Rosengren (HRR) singularity solution, especially in the case of λ = 0.5. The loading level appears to have little effects on the constraint parameter A2(t). As creep time increases, the creep zone (based on the equivalent creep strain) increases rapidly but the yield zone (with respect to a reference stress) decreases. Meanwhile, the crack tip constraint is increasing with creep time, particularly for the small cracks. It was also found that the normalized relationship between the contour integral C(t)/C* and the creep time t/tT (where tT is the characteristic time for transition from small-scale creep to extensive creep) is insensitive to the biaxial loading. Therefore, the relationship previously provided for uniaxial loading can be used for biaxial loading.


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