Cleavage fracture assessment for surface-cracked plates fabricated from high strength steels

摘要

This paper presents a combined experimental and numerical investigation to assess the probability of cleavage fracture for surface-cracked plates, using the Weibull stress framework. The proposed procedure defines a critical crack-front segment as the fracture initiation zone using the computed energy release rate. The Weibull-stress based local approach introduces a modified constraint correction function, which allows bidirectional scaling of the fracture toughness in surface-cracked specimens and the idealized 1T small-scale yielding condition. The proposed procedure predicts closely the probability of fracture for surface-cracked specimens made of three different types of steel materials. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.