THE APPLICATION OF MINIATURIZED THREE-POINT-BEND SPECIMENS FOR DETERMINATION OF THE REFERENCE TEMPERATURE OF JRQ STEEL

摘要

This contribution deals with determination of the reference temperature of JRQ steel using miniaturized specimens. The dimensions of used miniaturized specimens were 3 × 4 × 27 mm (thickness × width × length). This specimen type offers the utilization of limited amount of test material or broken halves of precracked Charpy and larger specimens. The test material comes from the broken halves of 0.5T SEB specimens previously tested for purposes of the reference temperature determination in Ciemat, Madrid. The fracture toughness tests of specimens were performed in the transition region of the steel according to the recommendations of standard ASTM E1921 and according Wallin's recommended temperature range for miniaturized specimens. The determined reference temperature of the Master Curve was very similar to the determined ones from three-point-bend specimen of sizes 0.2T, 0.4T and 0.5T. The obtained results confirm a necessity of conduct of tests at low temperatures and testing sufficient number of specimens in order to generate enough valid data for determination of the reference temperature.