Prediction of the Temperature Dependence on Fracture Toughness by New Stress Distribution Scaling Method

Abstract

In this paper, a new method for scaling the crack tip stress distribution under small scale yielding condition was proposed and named as T-scaling method. This method enables to identify the different stress distributions for materials with different tensile properties but identical load in terms of stress intensity factor (K) or J-integral (J). Then, a method to predict the fracture load at an arbitrary temperature from the already known fracture load at a reference temperature was proposed by assuming that the temperature dependence of a material is represented as the stress-strain relationship temperature dependence. This method was combined with the T-scaling method and the knowledge “fracture stress for slip induced cleavage fracture is temperature independent.” Once the fracture load is predicted, fracture toughness Jc at the temperature under consideration can be evaluated by running elastic-plastic finite element analysis. Finally, the above-mentioned framework to predict the Jc temperature dependency of a material in the ductile-to-brittle temperature region was validated for 0.55 % carbon steel JIS S55C. The proposed framework seems to have a possibility to solve the problem the master curve is facing in the relatively higher temperature region, by requiring only tensile tests.