Abstract
Characterizing the fracture resistance of ferritic steels operating within their Ductile-to-Brittle Transition Zone (DBTZ) has been successfully addressed through the development of the well-known Master Curve (MC). This tool assumes that fracture, in the presence of crack-like defects, is controlled by weakest-link statistics and follows a three-parameter Weibull distribution. When dealing with notch-type defects, there is no standardized solution to predict the fracture resistance within the DBTZ, but the authors have published some works demonstrating that the MC can also be applied in different ways to characterize ferritic steels containing notches. One of these ways is the direct application of the MC methodology, providing a specific reference temperature (T0N) for each material and notch radius. This work reviews this initial attempt to apply the MC in notched conditions, assessing the validity of the main MC hypotheses (initially valid for cracked conditions) when analyzing notch-type defects and providing experimental validation on steels S275JR, S355J2, S460M and S690Q.
Highlights
The analysis of the ductile-to-brittle transition zone (DBTZ) of ferritic steels has been widely performed over the years
The master curve (MC) [1,2,3,4,5] is a fracture characterization methodology for ferritic steels containing crack-like defects and working within their ductile-to-brittle transition zone (DBTZ)
Once the different hypotheses have been justified, it is concluded that the MC methodology should be applicable to notched conditions, with this application providing the values of apparent reference temperatures (T0N) gathered in Appendix A and represented
Summary
The analysis of the ductile-to-brittle transition zone (DBTZ) of ferritic steels has been widely performed over the years. In any case, assuming that the fracture behavior of ferritic steels containing notches and operating within the DBTZ is the same as that developed in cracked conditions is generally an over-conservative practice, and a specific tool is required for a better definition of a material’s fracture behavior under such circumstances. In this sense, the authors have previously published some literature with a view to addressing this issue [13,14,15], with two main alternatives.
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