Book Description

The procedures for measuring the plane strain fracture toughness, K/sub Ic/, of metals were originally developed for relatively high yield strength materials, the toughnesses of which were not affected by stain rate. The application of these procedures to lower yield strength and higher toughness structural and pressure vessel steels have since revealed a perplexing combination of problems involving the effects of geometry, stable crack growth and strain rate on the measured values of toughness. Only the geometric problems were encountered in the development of the procedures for measuring K/sub Ic/. For fracture in the linear elastic range of the load-displacement curve, these problems were overcome by specifying specimen dimensions sufficiently large with respect of the plastic zone size at fracture. However, in the case of structural and pressure vessel steels, it is not always possible to test specimens large enough for fracture to occur prior to general yielding. Therefore, in these cases, the effects of large-scale yielding prior to fracture cannot be avoided, but since they presently have no analytical explanation they are being treated empirically.