NUMERICAL EVALUTION OF STRESS INTENSITY FACTOR AND STRESS BIAXIALITY FOR COMPACT SPECIMEN BASED ON GRAPH MODEL OF ELASTIC SOLID

The paper presents the results of numerical calculation of the stress intensity factor and the biaxiality factor for a compact tension specimen. A singular element of the graph model of an elastic solid is used to analyze the stress state near a crack.

The Characterization of the Stress Fields Near a Crack Tip for a Compact Specimen for Elastic-Plastic Materials Dominated by the Plane Strain State

The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the stress field near a crack tip for a compact specimen dominated by the plane strain state using the finite element method. The analysis also includes the calculation of some parameters of in-plane constraints, both for small and large strain assumptions. It discusses the influence of the material characteristic, relative crack length and external load for the stress field, and the in-plane constraint parameter. The approximation formulas for some in-plane constraint parameters are presented.

The Quantitative Estimation of the Sensitivity of Corrosion and Hydrogen Environment on Fatigue Crack Growth Rate for Steels

In this paper, the tensile fatigue tests using small compact specimen were conducted by the corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement fatigue testing method which authors have proposed. Based on these results, the quantitative separated estimations of the sensitivity of Corrosion, Hydrogen Embrittlement (HE) and Facet-like Fracture Hydrogen Induced Dislocation Pile-up (F-HIDP) were made by using the acceleration factor, D*, that is the ratio of fatigue crack growth rate to that under atmospheric condition.

A Method to Characterize the Fracture Resistance of Dissimilar Metal Welds

Characterization of the fracture resistance of weld joints, and in particular dissimilar metal welds (DMW), is a huge and difficult work where no standard currently exists. As a consequence, characterizations of materials have to be done prior to the fracture tests in order to consider the mechanical aspects of the material mismatch via F.E. analysis in the fracture toughness determination. However, performing these characterization tests may imply using a lot of material, which is sometimes not available, and can be expensive. Most studies are usually realized on reduced sized mock-ups. The considered experimental mock-ups are pipes composed of a ferritic pipe welded to an austenitic one. The weld joints are made of Ni base alloys. A few small tensile samples have been extracted so that each material, even the heat affected zone (HAZ), can be characterized at low temperature. A fast method using laser sensors and a specific specimen shape has been developed and is used to identify these materials strain-stress curves at −125°C. Afterwards, these data have been used to simulate multi-material compact specimen tensile tests and single edge notch tension specimen, representing a conventional defect in the HAZ. Also, these two kinds of specimen have been extracted and the tests performed in order to compare the experimental results to the F.E. analysis. This paper presents the experimental work, the related specific devices, the F.E. analyses and the experimental analysis.

Performance of thermal conductivity probes for planetary applications

This work aims to contribute to the development of in situ instruments feasible for space application. Commercial as well as custom made thermal sensors, based on the transient hot wire technique and suitable for direct measurement of the effective thermal conductivity of granular media, were tested for application under airless conditions. The investigated media range from compact specimen of well known thermal conductivity used for calibration of the sensors to various granular planetary analogue materials of different shape and grain size. Measurements were performed under gas pressures ranging from 103 hPa down to about 10−5 hPa. It was found that for the inspected granular materials the given pressure decrease results in a decrease of the thermal conductivity by about two orders of magnitude. In order to check the ability of custom-made sensors to measure the thermal conductivity of planetary surface layers, detailed numerical simulations predicting the response of the different sensors have also been performed. Both, measurements and simulations, revealed that for investigations under high vacuum conditions (as they prevail e.g. on the lunar surface) the derived thermal conductivity values can significantly depend on the sensor geometry, the axial heat flow and the thermal contact between probe and surrounding material. Therefore in these cases a careful calibration of each particular sensor is necessary in order to obtain reliable thermal conductivity measurements. The custom-made sensors presented in this work can serve as prototypes for payload to be flown on future planetary lander missions, in particular for airless bodies like the Moon, asteroids and comets, but also for Mars.

Numerical Simulation on Residual Stress Generation in the Crack Tip of ASME P92 Steel

In the present study, the residual stress generated in the crack tip of compact specimens was investigated in order to analyze the effect of residual stress on the creep crack growth. Residual stresses were generated using loading in compression beyond yield and then unloading. The maximum region of residual stress in the crack tip was obtained by numerical simulations which calculated the effect of notch radius and penetrated stress. It was found that a 2.5 mm notch radius with the applied stress at 36 KN could generate the largest extent of residual stress ahead of crack tip in the compact specimen. Further, when the specimen was heated to a high temperature, the value of residual stress reduced while the distribution changed little.