Empirical estimation of uncertainties of Charpy impact testing transition temperatures for an RPV steel

The aim of the present work is to derive empirically a simple expression of the uncertainties on Charpy transition temperatures (TT), which depends only on the test temperatures and the number of tests at each of these temperatures. Calculations of the TT uncertainties of a RPV steel are performed based on an empirical representation of Charpy test results and a Monte Carlo procedure to generate large numbers of data sets for different test matrices. Applying usual procedures to determine the TT to the generated data sets gives access to the distributions of these quantities from which the uncertainties are calculated.An analytical expression for these uncertainties is proposed. (author)