Effects of toughness anisotropy and combined tension, torsion, and bending loads on fracture behavior of ferritic nuclear pipe

Abstract

This topical report summarizes the work on angled crack growth and combined loading effects performed within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission`s research program entitled {open_quotes}Short Cracks in Piping and Piping Welds{close_quotes}. The major impetus for this work stemmed from the observation that initial circumferential cracks in carbon steel pipes exhibited angular crack growth. This failure mode was little understood, and the effect of angled crack growth from an initially circumferential crack raised questions of how pipes under combined loading with torsional stresses would behave. There were three major conclusions from this work. The first was that virtually all ferritic nuclear pipes will have toughness anisotropy. The second was that the ratio of the normalized crack driving force (as a function of angle) to the normalized toughness (also as a function of the angle of crack growth) showed that there was an equal likelihood of cracks growing at any angle between 25 and 65 degrees. This agreed with the scatter of crack growth angles observed in pipe tests. Third, for combined loads with torsional stresses, an effective moment allows pure bending analyses to be used up to crack initiation. Crack opening area under combined loads could also be determined in this mariner.