Development of Test Guidance for Single Edge Notch Bend Fracture Toughness Specimens Containing Notches Instead of Fatigue Pre-Cracks

Author(s):  
Anthony J. Horn ◽  
Peter J. Budden

Structural integrity assessment codes such as R6 and BS7910 provide guidance on the assessment of flaws that are assumed to be infinitely sharp. In many cases, such as fatigue cracks, this assumption is appropriate, however it can be pessimistic for flaws that do not have sharp tips such as lack of fusion, porosity or mechanical damage. Several methods have been proposed in the literature to quantify the additional margins that may be present for non-sharp defects compared to the margins that would be calculated if the defect were assumed to be a sharp crack. A common feature of these methods is the need to understand how the effective toughness, characterised using the J-integral for a notch, varies with notch acuity. No comprehensive guidance currently exists for obtaining J experimentally from specimens containing notches, hence the typical approach is to use equations intended for pre-cracked specimens to calculate J for notched specimens. This paper presents a comprehensive set of test guidance for calculating J from Single Edge Notch Bend (SENB) fracture toughness specimens containing notches instead of fatigue pre-cracks. This has been achieved using 3D Finite Element Analyses to quantify the accuracy of formulae intended for pre-cracked specimens in fracture toughness testing standards ASTM E1820, BS7448-1 and ESIS P2-92 when applied to specimens containing notches. The paper quantifies the accuracy of these equations for notched SENB specimens and identifies the conditions under which the equations can lead to inaccurate measurement of J for notched specimens.

Author(s):  
Henryk G. Pisarski ◽  
Colin M. Wignall

The relationship between fracture toughness estimated using standard single edge notch bend (SENB), single edge notch tension (SENT) test specimens and fracture toughness associated with a circumferential flaw in a pipe girth weld is explored in terms of constraint using the Q parameter. It is shown that in the elastic-plastic regime, use of standard deeply notched SENB specimens provides a conservative assessment of fracture toughness, for both weld metal and HAZ, because of the high constraint associated with this specimen geometry. Use of specimen geometries and loading modes associated with lower constraint (e.g. SENT and shallowed notched SENB specimens), allow for improved estimates of fracture toughness to be made that are appropriate for the assessment of circumferential flaws in pipe girth welds. Recommendations are given on the specimen designs and notch orientations to be employed when evaluating weld metal and HAZ fracture toughness.


Author(s):  
Ba˚rd Nyhus ◽  
Mario Loria Polanco ◽  
Oddvin O̸rjasæther

During installation operations offshore pipes are often strained beyond yielding. Due to the high loading condition and the high costs of these operations it is important with accurate defect assessment analysis to avoid delays caused by unnecessary repairs or failure because of flaws that should have been detected and repaired. There is therefore a need for an accurate assessment procedure that can be a tool for defect assessment analysis for this application. It is commonly accepted that the fracture toughness is dependent on the geometry constraint at the crack tip. The traditional single edge notch bend (SENB) specimens have a high geometry constraint, and give lower bound fracture toughness for all geometries. For reeling operations these fracture toughness values are often too low to be used in defect assessment of reeling operations. The same is the assumption of plastic collapse when the net section stress is equal to the average between the yield strength and tensile strength. In this paper, the single edge notch tension specimen (SENT) is presented as an alternative fracture mechanics specimen. This specimen has a geometry constraint that is much closer to flaws in pipes than SENB specimens, which will give more realistic fracture properties of the pipe. In the procedure for defect assessments we present, both the fracture toughness and plastic collapse properties are taken from testing of SENT specimens. FE simulations and full scale testing verify the procedure.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (17) ◽  
pp. 22036-22040
Author(s):  
Xun Sun ◽  
Haitao Liu ◽  
Lingwei Yang ◽  
Ru Jiang ◽  
Haifeng Cheng

Author(s):  
Andrew Cosham ◽  
Phil Hopkins ◽  
David G. Jones ◽  
Julian Barnett

Line pipe steel is a carbon manganese steel. The toughness of line pipe steel undergoes a transition from high toughness (on the upper shelf) to low toughness (on the lower shelf) as the temperature decreases. A fluid will cool significantly as it expands through a leak in a pipeline. This has led to the suggestion that localised cooling of the material surrounding the leak might be sufficient to cool the material down to below the ductile to brittle transition temperature and cause a brittle fracture. Warm pre-stressing occurs when a load is applied to a structure containing a defect and then the temperature of the structure is reduced. Warm pre-stressing causes the defect in the structure to fail at a higher load at the lower temperature than if it had not experienced this prior loading at the previously higher temperature. A programme of single edge notch bend tests has been conducted on behalf of National Grid Carbon to demonstrate the beneficial effect of warm pre-stressing in a line pipe steel. The material tested was a sample of 914.4 mm outside diameter, 19.1 mm wall thickness, Grade API 5L X60 line pipe. Single edge notch bend specimens were subject to the ‘load-cool-fail’ cycle and the ‘load-unload-cool-fail’ cycle. The effect of different levels of stable ductile crack growth during the pre-load was also investigated. Warm pre-stressing is shown to have a beneficial effect. The load at failure in the specimens that had been subject to warm pre-stressing was higher than those that had not been subject to warm pre-stressing, and, in most cases, it was higher than the pre-load. The fracture toughness (in terms of the stress intensity factor) of the specimens that had been subject to warm pre-stressing was 1.4 to 1.7 times higher than that of those that had not been subject to warm pre-stressing. The results of the tests were conservatively predicted using the theoretical models. Also, the results are consistent with previous tests on structural steels. Therefore, localised cooling of the material around a leak in a pipeline is not predicted to result in a failure.


1989 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 381 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Wolfenden ◽  
JE Perez Ipiña ◽  
EL Santarelli

Author(s):  
Yuri Tkach ◽  
Anthony Horn ◽  
Adam Bannister ◽  
Edmund Bolton

An Engineering Critical Assessment (ECA) of a pipeline containing an axial defect is usually conservative if standard fracture test pieces are used for the fracture toughness testing. Conventional fracture toughness testing standards employ specimens containing deep cracks in order to guarantee conditions leading to high stress triaxiality and crack-tip constraint. In the current work, single edge notch bend (SENB) and single edge notch tension (SENT) test specimens of two different a/W (crack depth/specimen width) ratios (0.15 and 0.6) were used to obtain HAZ fracture toughness of a seam weld. The influence of specimen geometry and a/W ratio on fracture toughness was investigated. The Master Curve methodology was employed to characterise HAZ fracture toughness of the seam weld in the ductile-to-brittle transition region. The reference temperature T0 was estimated using the test results obtained on specimens of different geometries and constraint levels. A series of ECAs of the pipe containing a surface axial flaw was performed and the benefits of a constraint based fracture mechanics analysis were demonstrated.


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