Factors affecting fracture toughness

Please read page 536-543 from ASM Handbook Vol 20, 1997 (Central lib. Call# TA459 Met)

Fracture toughness greatly depends upon some factors and therefore when fracture data are generated they should resemble the actual service condition as much as practical
This may not apply to many modern high strength metals

Yield strength:

As a general phenomenon, for steels and high-strength alloys, an increase in the yield stress lowers the fracture toughness

Yield strength (MPa) and fracture toughness (MPa m1/2) for grade D6AC steel are 1495 and 102 and that of 18 Ni(300) steel are 1905 and 50-64 respectively. One material property should not be enhanced at the expense of others

Loading rate:

Steels and many materials exhibit different values of fracture toughness at different loading rates. Examples of rapid loading are dynamic bridge loading and ship slamming. Fracture toughness of materials is highly dependent upon the temperature. Many design applications such as aircraft and pressure vessel run at varying temperature ranges and hence it is necessary to consider a spectrum of fracture toughness

Temperature:

At low temperature, crack tip is sharp, materials yield stress is high and plastic zone size is small. At high temperatures, crack tip blunts, yield stress decreases and there is a larger plastic zone at crack tip

Materials thickness

As the thickness of a plate (section) increases there can be a decrease in the fracture toughness value to a limiting value
When a plate is thin there is no lateral constraint and conversely when the plate is thick there is large lateral constraint. The radius of plastic zone decreases from the outside of the surface to the center of the specimen.

Fracture toughness

Increasing temperature, decreasing yield strength and decreasing loading rate

Limiting critical toughness

Specimen thickness
(Based on Fig. 8, page 538, ASM Handbook Vol. 20)

Material orientation and anisotropy

Material properties including fracture toughness depends upon the texture and microstructure of the material. Drawing, extruding, rolling, forging and heat treatments tend to change the texture or microstructure of the materials. Some materials such as composites and natural woods are inherently anisotropic in nature

ME4254/ME4254E

A feature sized between 1 micron and 1 mm, that impairs the mechanical integrity and performance of a component Complex Fe and Mn sulfide inclusions

Defects can limit a damage tolerant design Metallurgical/microstructural

Inclusions, large precipitates, clusters or bands, brittle surface coatings, local soft or hard spots

Processing defects
Casting pores, powder contaminants, weld defects, forging/extrusion cracking, geometry discontinuities, tool marks and dents

Operations defects
Corrosion pits, wear/fretting damage, surface oxidation and carburization, hydrogen attack, creep voiding/cracking

Any damage tolerant design should explore the interrelationship between stress, crack length and fracture toughness

Nominal stress

Crack length/shape

Fracture Toughness of the materials

Designing safe pressure vessels All pressure vessels are designed, for safety, to yield or leak before they break. Small vessels are designed such that the material of the vessel will yield much before any existing crack may become critical for fast fracture. Yield before break

For large pressure vessels, design safety is achieved by ensuring that the smallest crack that will propagate unstably has a length greater than the thickness of the vessel wall. Such leaks are easily detected and it releases the pressure gradually. Leak before break

ME4254/ME4254E

Internal crack in a spherical pressure vessel:

Ref: Section 6.15, Materials Selection in Mechanical Design by Ashby, 2nd edition printed in 2000

t p R
t

For spherical pressure vessel:

pR 2t

For small pressure vessels: KIC = (c)1/2

Safety of the vessel can be ensured if the stress does not increase beyond certain . Here, the yield before break condition can be achieved if is equal to the yield stress of the materials.

(1)

Replacing with y (yield stress) and rearranging equation (1) we can write:
Maximize 2

M1 (2)

<

KIC y

Thus the pressure vessel can tolerate the largest crack size by maximizing the term on the right hand side of the equation (2).

For large pressure vessels:

For large pressure vessels, safety is ensured by arranging such that a crack equal to the thickness of the vessel is still stable and does not lead to fast fracture (Leak before break). For this condition the stress should be equal to or lower than,

KIC = (t/2)1/2 (3)

ME4254/ME4254E