Procedia Materials Science 3 ( 2014 ) 855 860

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

2211-8128 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Department of Structural Engineering
doi: 10.1016/j.mspro.2014.06.139
ScienceDirect
20th European Conference on Fracture (ECF20)
Ductile fracture simulation of full-scale circumferential cracked
pipes: (I) Carbon steel
Jae-Jun Han
a
, Ho-Wan Ryu
a
, Yun-Jae Kim
a,
*, Nak-Hyun Kim
b
and Jong-Hyun Kim
c

a
Korea University, Mechanical Engineering Dept., Seoul 136-713, KOREA
b
KEPCO E&C, Structural Integrity and Materials Dept., Yongin 446-713, Gyeonggi-Do, KOREA
c
KAERI, Fast Reactor Design Division., Daejeon 305-353, KOREA
Abstract
This paper reports ductile fracture simulation and comparison with carbon steel test data of full-scale cracked pipes via 3-D finite
element damage analysis based on stress-modified fracture strain model. Although there are few test results and discussion of
full-scale cracked pipes, it is not an easy task to properly evaluate fracture behaviour of large-scale components for various pipe
sizes with different shape of a crack-like defect. In such a situation, finite element (FE) damage analysis can be a competitive
alternative to characterize the fracture behaviour of cracked components such as crack initiation and maximum loads. In recent
years, a simple FE method [1] to simulate ductile fracture has been developed based on the stress-modified fracture strain model
[2,3]. The technique appropriately simulated ductile failure for miscellaneous cracked components [4,5]. However, for some
cases, large-scale components using small element size, FE analysis couldn't give reliable values because of numerical instability.
Element-size-dependent critical damage model enhanced by taking the effect of element-size on the ductile fracture damage
analysis is introduced to overcome this problem and to be applicable to the large-scale structures. In order to validate proposed
method, two types of carbon steel (A106 Gr. B and SA333 Gr. 6) pipes with a circumferential crack taken from [6] are
considered, subjected to four-point bending only and combined loading. It is shown that predicted crack initiation and maximum
loads are compared with experimentally measured values, showing overall good agreements.
2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Department of
Structural Engineering.
Keywords: Ductile fracture, Finite element analysis, Stress-modified fracture strain model, Damage analysis, Full-scale cracked pipes.


* Corresponding author. Tel.: +82-3290-3372; fax: +82-929-1718.
E-mail address: kimy0308@korea.ac.kr
2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Department
of Structural Engineering
856 Jae-Jun Han et al. / Procedia Materials Science 3 ( 2014 ) 855 860
Nomenclature
a, Aa crack length and extension in the radial direction, respectively
r, D
o
mean pipe radius and outer pipe diameter, respectively
t pipe thickness, mm
u half circumferential angle
Ac
e
p
incremental equivalent plastic strain
c
f
fracture strain
o
1
, o
2
, o
3
principal stress components
o
e
,

o
m
effective stress and hydrostatic stress, respectively
e, Ae accumulated damage and incremental damage
e
c
critical damage for cracking
, , material constant for stress-modified fracture strain
L
e
element size, mm
J J-integral

P
exp
initiation or maximum loads from experimental data
P
pred
initiation or maximum loads from finite element damage simulation
Introduction
In structural integrity assessment, full-scale test is an accurate and reliable way to evaluate fracture behaviour of
components containing crack-like defects. However, from a cost-effectiveness perspective, it is consequently
economically unfavourable. One efficient way to replace such extensive test programmes is to use finite element
(FE) damage analyses. Recently a simple FE method has been proposed [1] to implement fracture simulation based
on the well-known stress-modified fracture strain model [2,3]. Although the technique appropriately simulated
ductile failure for miscellaneous cracked components [4,5], the failure simulations using small element size cause
numerical instability. In order to overcome this problem and to be applicable to the large-scale structures, this paper
introduces element-size-dependent critical damage model [8]. In the subsequent section, test results of full-scale
pipes are briefly summarized with tensile and fracture toughness ones extracted from the pipes under the same
manufacturing processes. Section 3 describes the damage model and FE technique to simulate ductile fracture
behaviour. From the results of tensile and fracture toughness tests, damage criteria can be determined in section 4.
Section 5 gives simulated results compared with full-scale test data of circumferential cracked pipes taken from Pipe
Fracture Encyclopedia [6] to validate the proposed method. Section 6 concludes the paper with a discussion of the
main results.

1. Summary of Full-Scale Pipe Test Data
Battelle memorial institute has performed various test data sets consisted of tensile test, fracture toughness test
and full-scale circumferential cracked pipe under four-point bending test [7]. Two material sets of full-scale pipe
test data at 288
o
C were chosen from Pipe Fracture Encyclopedia [6] for SA333 Grade 6 and A106 Grade B carbon
steels. For the sake of space, only for A106 Gr. B, geometric variables, dimensions and schematic figures of cracked
pipes are shown in Table 1 and Fig. 1. Three types of cracks are considered, including through-wall, surface and
complex cracks. The complex crack indicates the cross section of the circumferential crack, consisting part of
through-wall crack with remaining surface crack depicted in Fig. 1d and Fig. 1e. For A106 Gr. B, the 0.2% proof
(yield) strength, ultimate tensile strength and reduction of area are 320MPa, 621MPa and 34.4%, respectively. In the
same order, 239MPa, 527MPa and 60.0%, respectively for SA333 Gr. 6. Full-scale pipe tests are comprise of five
tests of A106 Gr. B and four test of SA333 Gr.6.


857 Jae-Jun Han et al. / Procedia Materials Science 3 ( 2014 ) 855 860
(a) (b) (c)
(d) (e)
Fig. 1. Schematic of the cross-sectional view for A106 Gr. B pipes in Table 1: (a) through-wall cracked pipe, (b)-(c)
surface cracked pipes and (d)-(e) complex cracked pipes.

Table 1. Summary of specimen dimensions for circumferential cracked A106 Gr. B pipes at 288
o
C.
Specimen
D
o

(mm)
t
(mm)
r/t a/t u/
Through-wall crack (1.2-7) 168.0 14.0 5.50 - 0.360
Surface crack (4112-6) 167.5 14.8 5.16 0.680 0.503
Surface crack (1.1-9) w/ pressure 167.4 14.0 5.48 0.721 0.419
Complex crack (4113-5) 168.0 14.2 5.42 0.313 0.37/1.0
Complex crack (4113-6) 168.0 14.2 5.42 0.643 0.37/1.0
2. Ductile Fracture Simulation
3.1 Damage model
The damage model used in this paper is based on the phenomenological ductile fracture model which is also
known as the stress-modified fracture strain model [2,3]. In this model, fracture strain c
f
for dimple fracture is
assumed to depend exponentially on the stress triaxiality o
m
/o
e
:

1 2 3
exp ;
3
m m
f
e e e
| | + +
= + =
|
\ .
o o o o o
c o |
o o o
(1)

where o
i
(i=1-3) are principle stress components; and , and are material constants. Damage e can be calculated
by summing incremental damage Ae, given by
p
e
f
=
Ac
Ae
c
(2)
where
p
e
Ac
is the equivalent plastic strain increment, calculated from FE analysis implemented in ABAQUS using
user subroutines [9]. Determined fracture strain model (crit1) is shown in Fig. 2 based on tearing modulus data from
experimental data. This technique enables a criterion for ductile fracture simulation to be determined by tensile and
fracture toughness test only.

3.2 Element size effect
In the conventional damage analysis, a proper element size for the material calibrated corresponds to the case of
e
c
=1. The main concept of the proposed method is that the critical accumulated damage for fracture, e
c
, is assumed
858 Jae-Jun Han et al. / Procedia Materials Science 3 ( 2014 ) 855 860

(a) (b)
Fig. 2. Determination of criteria for ductile fracture simulation: (a) Assumed stress-modified fracture strain models
for the A 106 Gr. B steel at 288
o
C and (b) effect of fracture strain criteria on simulated data for determining tearing
modulus of the C(T) specimen.

Fig. 3. Dependence of the critical accumulated damage, e
c
, on the element size.

to vary with the element size. Then the failure criterion is

(element size) = =
c
e Ae e
(3)

When a larger element is used, a smaller e
c
value can be used to produce the same cracking rate as shown in Fig. 3.
Figure 2 shows that one criterion has unique ductile fracture behaviour regardless of the element size. Therefore,
proper criterion can be determined by tensile and fracture toughness test data. The element-size-dependent critical
damage model provides a solution to overcome the problem due to numerical instability.
3. FE analysis and Results
To enable ductile fracture simulation of full-scale pipes, the pipes were modelled with the element size of 0.6mm
and 0.8mm for A106 Gr. B and SA106 Gr. 6, respectively. A quarter model was used considering symmetry
conditions. Eight-node brick elements with full integrations (element type C3D8 in ABAQUS [9]) were uniformly
spaced in the cracked section as shown in Fig. 4a. Damage analysis was performed with the non-linear geometry
change option.
Figure 4b and 4c show that simulated crack growth are coloured in black at maximum load and sufficiently long
crack extension, respectively. For the complex cracked pipe, load versus load line displacement (LLD) data and
crack extension versus LLD are plotted in Fig. 5. Without damage analyses (conventional elastic plastic analysis),
the results continuously increased. On the other hand, with damage analyses, FE results are simulated well
859 Jae-Jun Han et al. / Procedia Materials Science 3 ( 2014 ) 855 860


(a)

(b)

(c)
Fig. 4. (a) FE mesh to simulate the complex cracked (4113-5) pipe test; and simulated cracked configurations (b) at
the maximum load and (c) at LLD=9mm.


(a) (b)
Fig. 5. Comparison of complex cracked pipe test results with simulated ones: (a) and (b) the 411305 test; (c) and (d)
the 4113-6 test.


(a) (b)
Fig. 6. Comparison of experimentally-measured loads with predictions for A106 Gr. B: (a) loads at crack initiation
and (b) maximum loads.

860 Jae-Jun Han et al. / Procedia Materials Science 3 ( 2014 ) 855 860
with experimental ones including crack initiation and maximum loads. Predicted crack initiation and maximum
loads for four different tests of SA333 Gr. 6 pipes and five different tests of A106 Gr. B pipes are compared with
experimentally measured values, in Fig. 6, showing overall good agreements less than 11% for the crack initiation
load and 6% for the maximum load.
4. Conclusions
Full-scale pipes with a circumferential crack for SA333 Gr. 6 and A106 Gr. B carbon steels are simulated using
FE damage analysis based on the stress-modified fracture strain model. The criteria for ductile fracture simulation
can be determined by tensile and fracture toughness test data only. To overcome numerical instability problem due
to the small element size and to be applicable to the large-scale structures, a concept of the element-size-dependent
critical damage model is introduced. The present method can predict well crack initiation and maximum loads of
full-scale pipe tests. This method offers significant advantages in simulating long, stable crack growth in large-scale
components.
Acknowledgement
This research was supported by National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science,
ICT and Future Planning. (NRF- 2013M2A7A1076396, NRF-2013M2A8A1040924)

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