Prediction of the Absence of Brittle Failure Risk for Ferritic Steel Piping Components in the Brittle-Ductile Region

This paper deals with the brittle fracture risk evaluation for a C-Mn piping component in the upper shelf of the brittle to ductile fracture transition temperature range, with the main objective to validate a predictive criteria, able to demonstrate the complete absence of brittle fracture risk. The criteria is based one a critical stress and the volume around the crack were the maximum principal stress exceed this critical stress. The model is calibrated on notched tensile specimens and CT specimens. A four-points bending pipe test has then been designed using this criterion to insure that no brittle fracture will occurs at a temperature that all CT specimens failed by cleavage. The material is a French secondary loop Tu42C ferritic steel and the pipe dimensions for the test are the same than the size of the principal secondary loop pipes. The results of the pipe test confirm the prediction with the model and the interpretation lead to define an equivalence between the loading conditions (based on the J parameter) of the pipe and the loading condition of a CT specimen.