Elsevier

International Journal of Mechanical Sciences
国际机械科学杂志

Volume 182, 15 September 2020, 105771
第 182 卷,2020 年 9 月 15 日,105771
International Journal of Mechanical Sciences

Fracture simulation model for API X80 Charpy test in Ductile-Brittle transition temperatures
API X80 夏比试验在韧脆转变温度下的断裂模拟模型

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmecsci.2020.105771Get rights and content  获得权利和内容
Full text access  全文访问

Highlights  亮点

  • A fracture simulation model for API X80 steel is established in ductile-brittle transition temperatures.
    建立了 API X80 钢在韧脆转变温度下的断裂模拟模型。
  • Ductile tearing is simulated by stress modified fracture strain model which is one of damage models related with local stress triaxility.
    延性撕裂采用应力修正的断裂应变模型来模拟,该模型是与局部应力三轴性相关的损伤模型之一。
  • Cleavage fracture is simulated by local maximum principal stress criterion based on Weibull stress.
    采用基于威布尔应力的局部最大主应力准则模拟解理断裂。
  • The maximum principal stress can computationally replace the Weibull stress.
    最大主应力可以通过计算代替威布尔应力。

ABSTRACT  抽象的

This paper presents a method to simulate fracture patterns of interacting ductile and cleavage fracture and experimental validation using API X80 Charpy test data. For ductile fracture, the stress modified fracture strain damage model is used, whereas for cleavage fracture, the maximum principal stress criterion is proposed. By combining ductile and cleavage fracture models, a numerical method to simulate interacting ductile and cleavage fracture is proposed. The proposed numerical method is validated by comparing with experimental Charpy test data at ductile-brittle transition temperatures. Comparison of fracture surfaces and impact energies shows good agreements.
本文提出了一种模拟韧性断裂和解理断裂相互作用的数值方法,并利用 API X80 夏比冲击试验数据进行了试验验证。对于韧性断裂,采用应力修正的断裂应变损伤模型;对于解理断裂,提出采用最大主应力准则。结合韧性断裂和解理断裂模型,提出了一种模拟韧性断裂和解理断裂相互作用的数值方法。通过与延脆转变温度下夏比冲击试验数据对比,验证了所提出的数值方法的有效性。断裂面和冲击功的对比结果显示,方法与数值方法吻合良好。

Keywords  关键词

API X80 Charpy test
Ductile-brittle transition temperature
Numerical simulation of interacting ductile and cleavage fracture
Stress-modified fracture strain model
Maximum principal stress criterion

API X80 夏比试验;韧脆转变温度;延性断裂与解理断裂相互作用的数值模拟;应力修正断裂应变模型;最大主应力准则

Nomenclature  命名法

    A, B  A、B
    material constant in strain-based failure criteria, see Eq. (1)
    基于应变的失效准则中的材料常数,见公式 (1)
    a1, a2
    一个 1 、一个 2
    fitting parameter of ductile-brittle combined failure model, see Eq. (10)
    延脆性复合破坏模型拟合参数,见式(10)
    b1, b2
    b 1 ,b 2
    fitting parameter of σu, see Eq. (11)
    拟合参数 σ u ,见公式(11)
    Dc
    critical damage value  临界伤害值
    E
    ECVN
    Charpy impact test energy
    夏比冲击试验能量
    k
    material constant in modified Johnson-Cook model, see Eq. (5)
    Le
    element size
    m
    exponent of the Weibull distribution, see Eq. (9)
    Pf
    cumulative failure probability
    RA
    reduction of area
    T, Tmelt
    temperature and melting temperature (°C)
    V0
    reference volume in fracture process zone
    εep
    εf
    fracture strain
    σ1
    maximum principal stress
    σe
    equivalent stress
    σe,RT
    equivalent stress at room temperature
    σm
    σTS
    σu
    ductile-brittle failure model parameter, Weibull constant, see Eq. (9)
    σw
    Weibull stress
    σy
    yield stress

    Abbreviations

    API
    American petroleum institute
    RT
    room temperature
    CVN
    Charpy V-notch
    CMOD
    crack mouth opening displacement
    DBTT
    FE
    finite element
    SENT
    single edge notched tension
    SMFS
    stress modified fracture strain

1. Introduction

Assessment against brittle fracture of high strength pipelines for energy transportation has been an important issue and requires accurate estimation of interacting ductile tearing and cleavage fracture behaviour at ductile-to-brittle transition temperatures. Although full-scale pipe burst tests would be the most convincing way to evaluate the fracture behaviour of real pipelines [1,2], it usually takes considerable time and cost to conduct a series of experiments. To overcome such problems, the drop weight tearing test (DWTT) has been developed [3]. Because the thickness of the DWTT specimen is the same as (or close to) that of a pipe and sufficient crack propagation path can be also included, it is known to be an adequate method to predict the transition temperature and fracture propagation patterns [4]. With increasing toughness and strength required for linepipe steels, fracture patterns in the DWTT tests become more complex. For instance, for recent high toughness and strength materials, abnormal fracture (cleavage fracture followed by ductile fracture, rather than vice-versa) is often observed [5,6].
Although actual fracture behaviours can be predicted accurately by full-scale pipe test or roughly by DWTT tests, an efficient tool to predict fracture behaviour would be fracture simulation using finite element (FE) analysis. Many models have already been proposed to numerically simulate ductile fracture, for instance, the Gurson-Tvergaard-Needleman model [13], [14], [15], cohesive zone model [16], Rousselier model [17] and stress-modified fracture strain (SMFS) model [18,19]. It has been shown by comparing with extensive experimental data that the SMFS model is simple but quite effective and reliable one for simulating ductile tearing [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26]. For cleavage fracture, Beremin [27] has proposed a stochastic approach to explain the distribution of brittle fracture energy. Ruggieri et al. [28] summarized various techniques for implementing the Beremin approach. There have been some attempts to relate the Weibull stress and fracture toughness [29]. The temperature dependence on the Weibull parameters has been an issue in many works [27,[30], [31], [32], [33], [34]].
There have been some attempts to predict combined ductile and cleavage failure by combining the respective theories of ductile and brittle failure [35], [36], [37], [38], [39]. In those works, the Weibull stress approach was used to calculate the cleavage failure probability through post-processing of FE analysis results to predict the scatter of ductile-brittle combined fracture after some amount of ductile tearing. However, interacting ductile tearing and cleavage fracture cannot be simulated. Recently it has been shown that not only for some high strength steels but also in press-notched DWTT specimen tests, ductile tearing can occur after cleavage fracture. In such cases, interacting ductile tearing and cleavage fracture must be explicitly simulated simultaneously, but no such a method has been proposed yet.
In this paper, a FE-based model is proposed to explicitly simulate interacting ductile tearing and cleavage fracture. The model is developed by combining the local maximum principal stress failure criterion with the SMFS ductile fracture model. The validity of the model is confirmed by comparing with Charpy test data of the API X80 steel. Section 2 describes the experiments to determine a ductile-brittle combined fracture model. The ductile fracture and cleavage fracture model is determined in Section 3 and 4 respectively. In Section 5, the developed method is applied to simulate interacting fracture of Charpy tests at various temperatures and simulation results are compared with experimental data. Section 6 concludes the presented work.

2. Summary of experiments

2.1. Tensile test

The API X80 grade steel typically used in pipelines to transport crude oil and natural gas under high pressure was used in this work. Tensile test was performed at room temperature according to API 5L [7]. A flat plate test specimen with the gauge length of 50.8 mm, shown in Fig. 1(a), was used. The specimen was taken from the plate in the hoop direction. The engineering stress-strain curve is shown in Fig. 1(b) and some important properties are summarized in Table 1.
Fig 1
  1. Download: Download high-res image (186KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 1. (a) Schematic drawing of the tensile test specimen with the dimensions and (b) engineering stress-strain curve of the tensile test for API X80 steel at room temperature.

Table 1. Tensile properties of X80.

T [°C]E [GPa]σy [MPa]σTS [MPa]RA [%]
25 °C19957064777.8

2.2. Single Edge Notched Tension (SENT) test

Single edge notched tension (SENT) test was carried out according to the recommendations given in DNV RP-F108 [8]. The specimen was also taken from the plate in the hoop direction. The dimensions of the specimen are shown in Fig. 2(a). The initial crack size, a0, was 10.03 mm. The crack mouth opening displacement was measured. To measure the crack length, the compliance method suggested in BS 8571 [9] was used with the polynomial fitting procedures given in Refs. [10], [11], [12]. Experimental data are shown in Fig. 2(b).
Fig 2
  1. Download: Download high-res image (429KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 2. (a) Schematic drawing of the SENT specimen with relevant dimensions and (b) load-CMOD and Δa-CMOD curves of the SENT test for API X80 steel at room temperature.

2.3. Charpy V-Notch Test

Charpy V-notch (CVN) impact test was performed according to API 5L [7] at temperatures ranging from -196 to 0°C. The specimen geometry and impact test results are shown in Fig. 3. The specimen was also taken from the plate in the hoop direction. Minimum, averaged and maximum impact energies are summarized in Table 2 for the given temperature, together with the number of tests. Note that 74 tests were performed at -150°C.
Fig 3
  1. Download: Download high-res image (263KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 3. (a) Schematic drawing of the Charpy V-notch test specimens with the dimensions and (b) energy scatter of the Charpy V-notch impact tests depending on temperature.

Table 2. Charpy test data with temperature.

T [°C]-196-150-120-90-60-300
Number of specimens37436633
Averaged ECVN [J]4.3510.7082.27221.80297.80446.63485.43
Minimum ECVN [J]3.424.8210.4778.74207.45380.68478.45
Maximum ECVN [J]5.1639.03221.5334.84344.67472.32492.89

3. Ductile tearing simulation damage model

3.1. Stress-modified fracture strain damage model

In the stress-modified fracture strain model [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], the multi-axial fracture strain should be determined as a function of the stress triaxiality σme using(1)εf=A·exp[1.5·σmσe]+Bwhere σm and σe denote the hydrostatic pressure and equivalent stress, respectively; and A and B are material constants that must be determined. In this paper, these constants were determined from tensile and SENT tests, and the procedure will be given later. Once εf is known, incremental damage ΔD can be calculated by(2)ΔD=Δεepεf
When the accumulated damage reaches a critical value, Dc,(3)ΔD=Δεepεf=Dclocal ductile fracture is assumed. This ductile failure simulation technique was implemented into ABAQUS [40] using user subroutines. In simulation, the incremental ductile damage was calculated at the Gauss point in an element using Eqs. (1) and (2). When the accumulated damage reaches the critical damage value, the elastic modulus and equivalent stress were reduced to 100MPa and 10MPa, respectively. Then the “ELEMENT DELETION” option was used to completely remove the element. Detailed explanations can be found in our previous works [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26].

3.2. Determination of ductile damage model parameters

The present damage model, Eqs. (1)-(3), includes three parameters to be determined; A, B and Dc. The procedure to determine these three parameters is described next.
The first step is to simulate the tensile test using elastic-plastic FE analysis. Three-dimensional (3-D) twenty-noded solid elements with reduced integrations (C3D20R in ABAQUS) were used and the FE mesh is shown in Fig. 4(a). For the analysis, true stress-strain data shown in Fig. 4(b) were used, which were obtained using the Bridgman correction [53] and fine-tuning using FE analysis with the large geometry change option. Simulation results are compared with the experiment data in Fig. 4(b), showing good agreement. From FE analysis, the stress triaxiality was extracted from the center of the specimen as a function of equivalent plastic strain, and was averaged as shown in Fig. 4(c). The resulting averaged stress traxiality and plastic strain to failure were (0.74, 1.51).
Fig 4
  1. Download: Download high-res image (329KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 4. (a) FE mesh of the tensile specimen, (b) comparison of experimental engineering stress-strain curve with the simulation at room temperature and simulated tensile curve at 0°C and (c) distribution of the stress triaxiality with plastic strain extracted from the center of the FE mesh for the tensile specimen.

The second step is to simulate the SENT test to determine the critical damage value, Dc, and the multi-axial fracture strain locus. The quarter FE model was made using a three-dimensional (3-D) eight-noded solid elements (C3D8 in ABAQUS), as shown in Fig. 5(a). The number of meshes and nodes were 58,432 and 67,511, respectively. The true stress-strain data from tensile test were used directly with the large geometry change option. Note that the minimum element size in the crack propagation area was set to be 0.1 mm. Note that the FE damage analysis results can be sensitive to the element size, the damage model parameters should be determined based on the given element size. For instance, when the minimum element size of 0.2mm is used, the element size effect can be compensated by choosing an appropriate value of Dc, as demonstrated in our previous works [22,23,25]. To determine the value of Dc, the first trial is to assume B=0 in Eq. (1), of which the locus is shown in Fig. 5(b). Then the value of Dc can be found to match the experimental crack initiation with simulation results. In this work, Dc=1 was found. Note that it was shown in our previous work [23] that the crack initiation prediction is mainly affected by Dc. The simulation result using B=0 and Dc=1 is compared with experimental Δa-CMOD curve in Fig. 6(a), showing that agreement is not so good. Using Dc=1 as the initial value, the values of B and Dc were then found to match the experimental Δa-CMOD and dΔa/dCMOD-CMOD curves. The results are shown in Fig. 6(a) and Fig. 6(b), suggesting that the simulation result using B=0.4 and Dc=1 agree well with experimental data. Thus the final fracture strain locus is given by(4)εf=3.34·exp[1.5·σmσe]+0.4which is shown in Fig. 5(b). Note that in the present case, the value of Dc does not change but sometimes its value changes slightly with B.
Fig 5
  1. Download: Download high-res image (533KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 5. (a) FE mesh for simulating the SENT test specimen (the minimum element size Le = 0.1 mm) and (b) multi-axial fracture strain locus for B=0 and 0.4 depending on stress triaxiality.

Fig 6
  1. Download: Download high-res image (526KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 6. Comparisons of (a) experimental Δa-CMOD curve, (b) experimental dΔa/dCMOD-CMOD curve and (c) experimental load-CMOD curve with the simulations results with various B values (=0, 0.2 and 0.4).

Using Eq. (4) with Dc=1, the simulated load-CMOD curve is compared with experimental data in Fig. 6(c), showing again better agreement with B=0.4 than with B=0 or B=0.2. Furthermore, the simulated fracture surface is compared with experimental data in Fig. 7, also showing good agreement.
Fig 7
  1. Download: Download high-res image (195KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 7. Comparison of the experimental fracture surface on the SENT test with the simulated fracture surface.

3.3. Numerical prediction of Charpy energy at upper shelf temperature (0°C)

Using the developed ductile fracture modeling method, the Charpy test at upper shelf temperature (0°C) is simulated and the resulting Charpy energy is compared with experimental data in this sub-section. For simulation, the effect of temperature on tensile properties should be quantified first. In this work, the following equation suggested in Ref. [41] was used for the temperature effect on tensile properties(5)σ=σe,RT(1λ|T|*k);λ={1:T=TroomT*|T|*:TTroom,T*=TTroomTmeltTroomwhere σe,RT denote the equivalent stress at room temperature; k=0.81 and Tmelt=1,500°C for X80 steel [40]. Note that the strain rate effect is not considered in Eq. (5). The resulting stress-strain curve at 0°C are shown in Fig 4(b).
Applying the fracture strain locus given in Eq. (4) and the stress-strain curve at 0°C, the Charpy test at 0°C was simulated. In simulation, the minimum element size in the crack propagation area was 0.1 mm, the same as that in the SENT simulation. The quarter model was used, made of the three-dimensional (3-D) eight-noded solid elements (C3D8 in ABAQUS), as shown in Fig. 8(a). The number of meshes and nodes were 31,767 and 36,253, respectively. Dynamic implicit analysis using the large geometry change option was applied with the 5 m/s speed of the striker at the time of impact.
Fig 8
  1. Download: Download high-res image (1000KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 8. (a) FE mesh for simulating the Charpy impact test with the minimum element size of Le = 0.1 mm, (b) the load-displacement curve extracted from the FE analysis at 0°C, and (c) contours of the stress triaxilaity ahead of the growing crack front from the Charpy impact test simulation at 0°C.

As shown in Fig. 8(b), the load-displacement curve can be obtained from the simulation, from which the Charpy impact energy can be calculated. The calculated Charpy impact energy was 482.80 J which was very close to experimental value of 485.43 J, as shown in Table 2. Additionally the contours of the stress triaxility ahead of the growing crack front from the Charpy impact test simulation is shown in Fig. 8(c). The contours of the stress triaxiality from 1.0 to 1.4 are shown. With crack growth, the region of high stress triaxiality region (for instance, 1.4) gets smaller.

4. Cleavage fracture simulation model

4.1. Maximum principal stress criterion

The Beremin model [27], which has been widely used to predict cleavage fracture [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], accounts for the scatter of fracture energy resulting from the random nature of brittle fracture using the following Weibull distribution:(6)Pf=1exp((σwσu)m)where σw represents the Weibull stress defined as(7)σw=(1V0V(σ1)mdV)1mwhere V is the volume of the fracture process zone; σ1 is the maximum principal stress; and the Weibull parameters, m and σu, are material constants. In the Beremin model, it is assumed that micro-cracks exist at the point where plastic deformation occurs and unstable fracture occurs if the maximum principal stress is large enough.
Some approaches have been made to analyze ductile-brittle fracture in combination with the Gurson-Tvergaard-Needleman model [37,39]. In those works, the Weibull stress, Eq. (7), is calculated by post-processing FE results to calculate cleavage failure probability after some amounts of ductile tearing. Therefore, this approach cannot be applied when cleavage fracture occurs before ductile tearing. More importantly it cannot simulate the combined ductile and cleavage fracture patterns in the ductile-brittle transition region.
To overcome these problems, the maximum principal stress within an element is used as a local cleavage fracture criterion in the present work. This is because the Weibull stress defined by Eq. (7) is found to be proportional to the largest maximum principal stress value calculated in all finite elements. We assume that Eq. (7) can be rewritten as(8)σw(V0)=(1V0V(σ1)mdV)1m(1V0i=1ne(σ1i)mVi)1m(VV0)1m·max(σ1)|Vf(VV0)·σ1,maxwhere ne denotes the total number of elements used in calculations. Based on the FE analysis of the Charpy test specimens, we found that the 1/m-power of the sum of the maximum principal stress depends linearly on the largest maximum principal stress over the fracture process zone, V, as given in Eq. (8). It means that the Weibull stress, as a cleavage criterion, can be replaced by a local maximum principal stress. The linear relationship between the Weibull stress and largest maximum principal stress can be expressed using a function of V/V0. Note that both stresses, σw and σ1,max, are the same when V/V0 is unity. Ruggieri et al. [28] referred that the value of V0 could be conveniently assigned as a unit value in computations; in other words, V/V0 can be also assigned as a unit value.
Figure 9 shows our FE results of the relationship between the Weibull stress and the largest maximum principal stress in the Charpy specimen. The Weibull stresses from FE analysis were calculated by using post-processing using Eq. (8) in each time step. At the same time, the largest maximum principal stresses were extracted from the FE analysis. In this calculation, the value of m was assumed to be twelve (which results from the Weibull distribution of the Charpy impact energy data at -150°C, which will be shown later in Fig. 10). However, the use of other values generally reported [27,28,30,31,36,37] gives the same answer. It shows that the dependence of the Weibull stress and largest maximum principal stress is linear, and the slope depends on the choice of V/V0. This supports our idea that σ1 in an element can be used as an alternative local criterion for determining cleavage fracture. In fact, such the maximum principal stress criterion was the original approach to quantify the fracture energy due to cleavage caused by the micro-cracks contained within the specimens [42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47], [48], [49], [50]. However, by combining the local criterion with Weibull distribution, the energy scatter in transition region can be captured and interacting ductile tearing and cleavage fracture can be simulated.
Fig 9
  1. Download: Download high-res image (146KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 9. Comparison of the Weibull stress and the maximum principal stress, resulting from the present FE analysis of the Charpy test.

Fig 10
  1. Download: Download high-res image (251KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 10. (a) Relationship between ln(ECVN/E0) and σ1,max/σy extracted from the simulation of the Charpy tests and (b) cumulative probability of failure depending on σ1,max at -150°C.

4.2. Determination of the maximum principal stress criterion for X80

Using Eq. (8), the Weibull distribution can be re-written using the maximum principal stress as(9)Pf=1exp((σ1,max(ECVN)σu(T))m)where σ1,max is assumed to be a function of the Charpy impact energy (ECVN); and m to be temperature-independent but σu(T) to be temperature-dependent.
Figure 10(a) shows the relationship between σ1,max and ECVN at various temperatures. In the figure, σ1,max is the maximum principal stress calculated from FE analysis of the Charpy specimen, and is normalized with respect to the yielding strength at that temperature, σy(T). Each data point in the figure corresponds to one Chary test. The results show that the relationship between σ1,max and ln(ECVN/E0) is linear but depending on ECVN, two distinct slopes can be seen. Such different slopes might result from presence of more ductile tearing at higher ECVN.
Data regression gives the following relationship(10)σ1,max(E)σy(T)=a1·ln(ECVNE0)+a2={0.40ln(ECVN4.82)+1.83,ECVN38.07J0.10ln(ECVN4.82)+2.45,ECVN38.07Jwhere E0 is a normalizing energy, which is taken to be the minimum impact energy experimentally calculated at -150°C in this study, E0=4.82J, as given in Table 2. Although the slopes of the two straight lines are different, the same value for E0 is used. The right hand side terms in Eq. (10) do not have temperature dependence. The effect of temperature is only reflected on the yield stress. Note that for ECVN=~490J which is the maximum impact energy at 0°C (see Table 2), the value of σ1,max/σy is approximately 2.9 which is close to the HRR value for non-hardening materials [51]. Combining Eq. (9) and (10) gives the results Fig. 10(b), from which the Weibull parameters, m and σu, are determined as m=12.43 and σu=1,442 MPa.
It was shown that the maximum principal stress from the notch tip can be expressed as the logarithmic function of the distance by the slip-line theory [54]. Furthermore a simple mechanistic approach for cleavage fracture is to assume that cleavage fracture occurs when the maximum principal stress at the critical distance reaches the critical value. Assuming that cleavage failure is initiated from randomly-distributed inclusions, one can expect that the maximum principal stress criterion can depend logarithmically on the Charpy impact energy.

4.3. Determination of temperature-dependent σu

To complete the cleavage model, the Weibull constants, σu and m, must be determined as a function of temperature. In this work, the constant m is assumed to be temperature independent, but σu to be temperature dependent. To calculate the temperature dependent σu, the following equation suggested in the Ref. [34] was used.(11)σu(T)=b1·exp(b2T)
The two constants b1 and b2 were determined using the Charpy data at -150°C and -90°C. The results are shown in Fig. 11. The number of Charpy impact tests conducted at -90°C was six, as given in Table 2. The experimental results were fitted using Eq. (9) with m=12.43, and the results are shown in Fig. 11(a), giving σu = 1,843 MPa at -90°C. Using two σu values at -90°C and -150°C, two constants b1 and b2 can be determined as; b1=3,047MPa and b2=92.0°C. Tanguy at el. [36] found that σu was independent of temperature in the range between -196°C and -150°C for A508 steel, since potential for causing cleavage was maintained by void nucleation at carbides [39]. Lopez et al. [52] showed from SEM observations that micro-crack propagation within carbide regions was dominant for X80 steel, which suggest that the Tanguy's argument can be also applied to the X80 steel. Therefore, the value of σu below -150°C was assumed to be independent on temperature and to remain constant, as shown in Fig. 11(b). In order to check the validity of this assumption, the result of σu without the cut-off is also examined, as shown in Fig. 11(b) in dotted line.
Fig 11
  1. Download: Download high-res image (235KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 11. (a) cumulative probability of failure depending on σ1,max at -90°C and (b) distribution of σu depending on temperature, determined by two different temperature data.

4.4. Charpy impact energy at Ductile-Brittle transition temperatures

By combining Eqs. (9) to (11), the Charpy impact energy as a function of temperature can be obtained as(12)ECVN=E0·exp(1a1[σu(T)σy(T)·{ln(11Pf)}1ma2])where a1 and a2 can be found in Eq. (10). The energy curves corresponding to Pf=0.05, 0.1, 0.9 and 0.95 are shown in Fig. 12. The predictions with the cut-off in σu are shown in solid lines, whereas those without the cut-off in dotted lines. Overall predicted curves with the cut-off in σu can bound experimental data well. On the other hand, the predicted curves without the cut-off underestimate energies at very low temperature.
Fig 12
  1. Download: Download high-res image (196KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 12. Prediction of the scatter of the Charpy impact test energies depending on temperature by using Eq. (12).

5. Numerical simulation of interacting ductile tearing and cleavage of Charpy tests at transition temperatures

5.1. FE analysis

The Charpy test provides the Charpy impact energy for a given temperature. From the test, the fracture surface exhibiting both cleavage and ductile fracture surface in general can be also observed. As the objective of this work is to numerically simulate interacting cleavage and ductile fracture surface, the FE analysis is performed as follows to validate the proposed analysis method:
  • For a given Charpy impact energy (ECVN) and temperature, determine the maximum principal stress σ1,max using Eq. (10) for the cleavage fracture simulation model
  • Perform fracture simulation using the determined criterion and the ductile fracture simulation model determined in Section 3 to compare with experimental fracture surfaces
  • During simulation, the impact energy can be also obtained and be compared with experimental input
If the failure probability (Pf) and temperature are pre-scribed, the corresponding σ1,max value can be also determined from Eq. (12), and the analysis can be done as described above.
Fracture simulation can be performed as follows using user-defined functions provided in ABAQUS. The schematic diagram of the simulation is described in Fig. 13(a) and the flow chart of the FE implementation is given in Fig. 13(b). At each gauss point in an element, the maximum principal stress value is checked. If it is greater than σ1,max, cleavage fracture is assumed and the element is removed by reducing stresses and Young's modulus sharply to small values, as described in Section 3. If the maximum principal stress is less than σ1,max, then the plastic damage increment is calculated according to Eq. (2) and is saved for the next calculation. It should be noted that ductile and cleavage fracture is assumed to be independent, and thus the accumulated plastic damage does not affect the cleavage fracture. With crack growth (by removing elements), the crack tip stress fields will change by stress redistribution. Ductile or cleavage fracture is checked accordingly with crack growth.
Fig 13
  1. Download: Download high-res image (389KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 13. (a) schematic diagram of the simulation for interacting cleavage and ductile tearing and (b) flow chart of the fracture simulation method.

5.2. Comparison with experimental fracture surface

Experimentally-observed fracture surfaces of the Charpy test specimens at different temperatures are compared with FE analysis results in Fig. 14, Fig. 15, Fig. 16, Fig. 17. Figure 14 show the results at -60°C. In Fig. 14(a), the left part of the figure shows the experimental fracture surface and the right one the FE analysis results. The experimental fracture surfaces are classified into ductile fracture, cleavage fracture and shear lip [36]. As the shear lip was not simulated explicitly in this work, only two surfaces are indicated in the FE results; ductile and cleavage fracture surface. It can be seen that simulated fracture surfaces agree well with experimental ones. From the test, the measured Charpy impact energy was ECVN=223.5J. Based on this value, the value of σ1,max is calculated using Eq. (10), which is also given in the figure caption. This is the criterion for cleavage fracture in simulation. After simulation, the impact energy can be calculated from simulated load-displacement curves, as shown in Fig. 14(b). The calculated value was ECVN=196.8J which is slightly different from the experimental value of ECVN=223.5J. Corresponding results at -90°C, -120°C and -150°C are shown in Fig. 15, Fig. 16, Fig. 17. Similar findings can be made. The energy results shown in Fig. 14, Fig. 15, Fig. 16, Fig. 17 are summarized in Fig. 18, showing the predictions agree overall well with the experimental results.
Fig 14
  1. Download: Download high-res image (440KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 14. (a) Comparisons of experimental fracture surface with the simulation at -60°C (ECVN=223.5J and σ1,max=1,740MPa) and (b) simulated load-displacement curve of the Charpy test. The gray one indicates cleavage fracture, whereas the lighter colour in FE results indicates ductile fracture surface.

Fig 15
  1. Download: Download high-res image (417KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 15. (a) Comparisons of experimental fracture surface with the simulation at -90°C (ECVN=78.7J and σ1,max=1,717MPa) and (b) simulated load-displacement curve of the Charpy test. The gray one indicates cleavage fracture, whereas the lighter colour in FE results indicates ductile fracture surface.

Fig 16
  1. Download: Download high-res image (447KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 16. (a) Comparisons of experimental fracture surface with the simulation at -120°C (ECVN=221.5J and σ1,max=1,824MPa) and (b) simulated load-displacement curve of the Charpy test. The gray one indicates cleavage fracture, whereas the lighter colour in FE results indicates ductile fracture surface.

Fig 17
  1. Download: Download high-res image (391KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 17. (a) Comparisons of experimental fracture surface with the simulation at -150°C (ECVN=13.0J and σ1,max=1,470MPa) and (b) simulated load-displacement curve of the Charpy test. The gray one indicates cleavage fracture, whereas the lighter colour in FE results indicates ductile fracture surface.

Fig 18
  1. Download: Download high-res image (126KB)
  2. Download: Download full-size image

Fig. 18. Comparison of the measured Charpy impact energies with predicted ones from FE simulation.

6. Conclusion

This paper presents a method to simulate fracture patterns of interacting ductile and cleavage fracture and experimental validation using API X80 Charpy test data. The method uses the stress modified fracture strain damage model for ductile fracture and the maximum principal stress criterion for cleavage fracture. The ductile fracture model is determined from the tensile test and single edge notch tension test data. For the cleavage fracture model, the maximum principal stress is determined as a function of the Charpy impact energy using the Charpy test data over temperatures. The presented cleavage model is related to the well-known Weibull stress model. By combining ductile and cleavage fracture models, a numerical method that can simulate interacting ductile and cleavage fracture.
To validate the proposed numerical method, simulation results are compared with experimental Charpy test data at various temperatures. In simulation, the experimentally-measured Charpy impact energy is an input, from which the maximum principal stress for cleavage fracture is estimated. Comparison of simulated fracture surfaces with experimental ones shows good agreements. The calculated impact energies from simulation are also similar to experimental ones.
We believe that the proposed numerical method would be the first one to simulate interacting ductile tearing and cleavage fracture. It would be very useful to understand fracture behaviours observed in pipeline and pressure vessel steels, such as crack arrest after significant cleavage fracture, cleavage fracture after long ductile tearing and so on. Although comparison with Charpy test data shows good agreement and thus provides confidence, it would be important that the method can be applied to simulate interacting ductile and cleavage fracture in larger scale specimens or components. Our future work is to apply the presented model to the drop weight tearing test (DWTT) or full-scale pipe test, where the relevant dimensions are much larger than the Charpy specimen. One of main technical issue for simulating the DWTT and full-scale pipe tests would be the element size effect. The use of the small element size would be preferable, but can cause numerical difficulties.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ji-Su Kim: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Visualization. Yun-Jae Kim: Validation, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration. Myeong-Woo Lee: Software, Formal analysis. Ki-Seok Kim: Investigation, Resources. Kazuki Shibanuma: Validation, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by POSCO [2017R240], and Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement [17IFIP-B067108-05].

References

Cited by (25)

  • Fracture toughness prediction of hydrogen-embrittled materials using small punch test data in Hydrogen

    2022, International Journal of Mechanical Sciences
    Citation Excerpt :

    To determine the damage parameters α, β, and Dc from Eqs. (1) and (3), tensile and fracture toughness tests were simulated by means of FE analysis. Detailed procedures for determining the damage model parameters can be found in [59–60], and only a brief description is provided here. First, the tensile test was simulated by performing an elastic-plastic FE analysis using the commercial FE analysis program ABAQUS [63].

  • Simulation of ductile-to-brittle transition combining complete Gurson model and CZM with application to hydrogen embrittlement

    2022, Engineering Fracture Mechanics
    Citation Excerpt :

    Embrittlement is a type of environmentally-assisted fracture, which can occur under low temperature condition [1–4], upon irradiation [5] or due to the absorption of solute atoms such as hydrogen [6–10] and oxygen [11].

View all citing articles on Scopus
View Abstract