DYNAMIC FINITE ELEMENT MODELING OF THE UPPER SHELF ENERGY OF PRECRACKED CHARPY SPECIMENS OF NEUTRON IRRADIATED WELD METAL 72W

摘要

Dynamic finite element modeling of the fracture behavior of fatigue-precracked Charpy specimens in both unirradiated and irradiated conditions was performed using a computer code, ABAQUS Explicit, to predict the upper shelf energy of precracked specimens of a given size from experimental data obtained for a different size. A tensile fracture-strain based method for modeling crack extension and propagation was used. It was found that the predicted upper shelf energies of full and half size precracked specimens based on third size data were in reasonable agreement with their respective experimental values. Similar success was achieved for predicting the upper shelf energy of subsize precracked specimens based on full size data.