Super-Tough Steel For Bridges and Other Applications. Final Report

摘要

Higher toughness in steels permits the presence of longer fatigue cracks prior to rupture making it less likely that they would escape detection. Since steels become brittle at cryogenic temperatures, a steel with higher fracture toughness at low temperatures than existing steels is of interest for infrastructure applications such as bridges and tank cars that transport cryogenic liquids such as liquid chlorine or compressed natural gas. A steel (ASTM A710 Grade B) was previously developed at Northwestern University with FHWA and ITI financial support and with IDOT participation for bridge and other infrastructure applications and was successfully used in construction of a bridge at Lake Villa, Illinois.