Application of ductile fracture assessment methods for the assessment of pressure vessels from high strength steels (HSS)

The economical and safe design of pressure vessels requires, besides others, also a detailed knowledge of the vessel failure behaviour in the case of existing imperfections or cracks. The behaviour of a cracked component under a given loading situation depends on material toughness. For ferritic steels, the material toughness is varying with temperature. At low temperature dominantly brittle fracture behaviour is observed, at high temperature the failure mode is dominantly ductile fracture. The transition between these two extremes is floating. In the case of existing or postulated cracks, the safety analysis has to be performed using fracture mechanics methods. In the lower shelf of toughness, KIc as of ASTM E 399 is the characterising value for crack initiation and immediate unstable crack extension (cleavage). In the upper shelf level the characterising value is the 'actual crack initiation toughness' Ji acc. to ISO 12135, characterising the onset of slow stable crack extension. For the transition regime in ASTM E 1921 the instability values KJc are defined, characterising cleavage failure after more or less extended ductile crack growth. The safety analysis of a component operated in the upper shelf of the material toughness, has to consider initiation as well as stable crack extension following initiation. The inclusion of any crack extension into this consideration needs to consider the influence of the constraint in front of a crack tip, leading to multiaxial stress conditions and decreasing the material crack resistance significantly. Thus, the exclusion of crack initiation needs to be proven in a first step of each safety analysis. Assessing the component in a uniform way over the relevant temperature range is possible by using initiation characteristics, which also have the advantage of transferability. A change of criterion considering initiation at the lower shelf, instability in the transition range and again initiation in the upper shelf can be avoided. Depending on the aim of the analysis, the fracture mechanics safety analysis procedures can be used to determine the critical load, the critical crack size or the required material characteristic