The Effect of Specimen Size in Charpy Impact Testing

Abstract

Charpy V-notch impact tests were performed on the full-, half-and third-size specimens from two ferritic SA 508 Cl. 3 steels for nuclear pressure vessel. New normalization factors were proposed to predict the upper shelf energy(USE) and the ductile-brittle transition temperature(DBTT) of full-size specimens from the measured data on sub-size specimens. The factors for the USE and the DBTT are respectively, where B the width, b the ligament size, the elastic stress concentration factor, and R the notch root radius. These correlations successfully estimated the USE and DBTT of the full-size specimens based on sub-size specimen data. In addition, the size effects were studied to develop the correlations among absorbed energy, lateral expansion(LE) and displacement. It was also found that the LE was able to be estimated from the displacement obtained by the instrumented impact test, and that the displacement would be used as a criterion for the toughness of the steels corresponding to change in their yield strength.h.