An investigation on circumferentially cracked bar geometry for critical CTOD determination

Codes and standards for oil&gas industry, as OS-DNV-F101, recommend the use of single edge cracked plate in tension (SEN(T)) for the experimental determination of the material critical CTOD. For clad pipe welds, this specimen geometry is difficult to be obtained for the weld material or clad corrosion resistance alloy due to the specimen shape and minimum dimensions. Alternatively, circumferential cracked bar geometry, CCB(T) could be used. This geometry configuration can be machined when limited material quantity is available and used for both quasi-static and dynamic fracture characterization. In this paper, an extensive elastic-plastic finite element investigation has been carried out on both SEN(T) and CCB(T) geometries in order to select equivalent configurations in the J-Q space. Ductile crack initiation and growth has been simulated using continuum damage mechanics model. Numerical simulation results indicate that CCB(T) with a crack depth ratio r/a=0.2 realizes constraint loss similar to that of SEN(T) with a crack depth ratio a/W=0.5. Similar crack resistance curves have been obtained for these two configurations confirming the equivalence of the selected sample geometries. Copyright © 2014 by ASME.