As part of an overall program to refine assessment procedures for defects in girth welds subject to longitudinal strain, a series of analyses and experiments have been conducted on single edge notch tension (SENT) specimens. These were used todevelop techniques to account for the loss of constraint during the fracture of defects in thin-walled pipe sections subjected to local tension. Finite element analyses have been conducted to develop correlations to describe the stress fields in terms ofthe J-integral and the Q-stress. These correlations have been used in conjunction with a fracture criterion to predict the failure of SENT specimens based on fracture toughness data from high-constraint single edge notch bending (SENB) specimens. Theresults have been implemented in the form of a failure assessment diagram and are compared with experiments conducted using both parent plate and welded specimens.
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