Abstract
The basic Master Curve (MC) method for analysis of brittle fracture test
results is intended for macroscopically homogeneous ferritic steels
only. In reality, the steels in question are seldom fully
macroscopically homogeneous. The materials' toughness may depend on the
specimen location in the sample. Inhomogeneity may be deterministic or
random (or a mixture of both) in nature. Deterministic inhomogeneity can
be accounted for, provided that the specimen extraction histories are
known and enough specimens are tested. Random inhomogeneity is much more
difficult to handle. The structural integrity assessment procedure
SINTAP contains a lower tail modification of the MC analysis. This
enables conservative lower bound type fracture toughness estimates also
for inhomogeneous materials. The problem is that the SINTAP method, does
not provide information of the tougher material. Therefore, a
probabilistic description of the complete material is not possible. In
this paper, a new comparatively simple extension of the MC is introduced
for inhomogeneities governed by two separate MC distributions. The
extension is shown to be extremely efficient in describing e.g. weld
heat-affected zone (HAZ) data. In addition, a simple method for the
analysis of random inhomogeneous material consisting of mixed data is
presented. The method is also applicable for data sets including several
different materials.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2329 - 2346 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Engineering Fracture Mechanics |
Volume | 71 |
Issue number | 16-17 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2004 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- Master Curve
- ferritic steels
- inhomogeneity
- brittle fracture
- statistical analysis
- fracture toughness
- heat affected zones
- weld
- ProperTune