Prediction of fracture resistance curves from tensile data for carbon steel piping materials

Abstract In order to perform leak-before-break analyses of nuclear piping systems and integrity evaluation of reactor vessels, full stress/strain (σ−e) curves and fracture resistance (J−R) curves for the concerned materials are required. However, it is time-consuming and expensive to obtain the J−R curves experimentally. The objective of this paper is to develop two methods for the J−R curve prediction from tensile data. In the first method, elastic-plastic finite-element analyses for a series fo crack length/specimen width values are performed. The load versus load line displacement curves corresponding to the fracture strain are obtained, and the J−R curves based on the generalized locus method are developed. In the second method, the correlation between σ−e curves and J−R curves is statistically analyzed and an empirical equation for the J−R curve prediction from the tensile data is proposed. A good correlation between the predicted results from both proposed methods and experimental data is obtained.