Fracture mechanical analysis of operational damaged piping

A series of crack arrest experiments by means of transverse wedge-loaded compact specimen was simulated numerically to verify the dynamic J-integral formulation, for applications in brittle and ductile regions as well as for two- and three-dimensional geometries. The transverse wedge-loaded compact crack arrest test is a widely used small scale test to evaluate the crack arrest toughness of nuclear pressure vessel steels. In this test method the crack attains a high velocity after initiation, then decelerates to a low velocity prior to arrest. The opening displacement remains constant during the crack propagation. Crack extension and the opening displacement behaviour were measured using a sensitive time scale. Regarding material toughness two entirely different kind of steels, HFX 760 (brittle) and 20 MnMoNi 55 (ductile) were considered. The testing temperature was the room temperature. The numerical analyses were performed by an extended version of the finite element code ADINA. Crack propagation was simulated by 'node shift and fixity release' procedure. Discussions in this report are, among others, directed to the: Numerical stability of different J-integral contours during the fast crack propagation and comparison between the static approach, dynamic finite element analyses and experimental results for crack initiation toughness and arrest toughness. The numerical simulation results and experimental data were in close agreement. The achieved results confirm that the dynamic J-integral formulation is able to describe the rapid crack propagation and the crack arrest in steel components sufficiently. (orig.)