M. Seidenfuss

An experimental and numerical investigation of fracture resistance behaviour of a dissimilar metal welded joint

Abstract Dissimilar welds impose a challenge to the engineers concerned with the structural integrity assessment of these joints. This is because of the highly inhomogeneous nature of these joints in terms of their microstructure, mechanical, thermal, and fracture properties. Fracture mechanics-based concepts cannot be directly used because of the problems associated with the definition of a suitable crack-tip loading parameter such as J-integral crack tip opening displacement (CTOD), etc. Again, depending upon the location of initial crack (i.e. base, weld, buttering, different interfaces, etc.), further crack propagation can occur in any material. The objective of the current work is to use micro-mechanical models of ductile fracture for initiation and propagation of cracks in the bimetallic welds. The authors have developed a finite element formulation that incorporates the porous plasticity yield function due to Gurson—Tvergaard—Needleman and utilized it here for the analysis. Experiments have been conducted at MPA Stuttgart using single edge-notched bend (SEB) specimens with cracks at different locations of the joint. The micro-mechanical (Gurson) parameters of four different materials (i.e. ferrite, austenite, buttering, and weld) have been determined individually by simulation of fracture resistance behaviour of SEB specimens and comparing the simulated results with those of the experiment. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the damage model in predicting the crack growth in the actual bimetallic-welded specimen, simulation of two SEB specimens (with initial crack at ferrite—buttering and buttering—weld interface) has been carried out. The simulated fracture resistance behaviour compares well with those of the experiment.

A Mesh Independent GTN Damage Model and Its Application in Simulation of Ductile Fracture Behaviour

Ductile fracture process involves the typical stages of nucleation, growth and coalescence of voids in the micro-scale. In order to take the effects of these voids on the stress carrying capability of a mechanical continuum during simulation, damage mechanics models, such as those of Rousselier and Gurson-Tvergaard-Needleman (GTN) are widely used. These have been highly successful in simulating the fracture resistance behaviour of different specimens and components made of a wide spectrum of engineering steels. However, apart from the material parameters, a characteristic length parameter has to be used as a measure of the size of the discretisation in the zone of crack propagation. This inherent limitation of these local damage models prevents them from simulating the stress distribution near the sharp stress gradients satisfactorily, especially at transition temperature regime. There have been efforts in literature to overcome the effect of mesh-dependency by development of nonlocal and gradient damage models. A nonlocal measure (weighted average of a quantity over a characteristics volume) of damage is usually used in the material constitutive equation. In this paper, the authors have extended the GTN model to its nonlocal form using damage parameter ‘d’ as a degree of freedom in the finite element (FE) formulation. The evolution of the nonlocal damage is related to the actual void volume faction ‘f’ in ductile fracture using a diffusion type equation. The coupled mechanical equilibrium and damage diffusion equations have been discretised using FE method. In order to demonstrate the mesh independent nature of the new formulation, a standard fracture mechanics specimen (i.e., 1T compact tension) has been analysed using different mesh sizes near the crack tip and the results have been compared with those of experiment. The results of the nonlocal model have also been compared with those of the local model. The effect of different GTN parameters on the fracture resistance behaviour of this specimen has been studied for the nonlocal model and these results have been compared with those of experiment.Copyright

Prediction of Fracture Resistance Behaviour Using Nonlocal Damage Model

Prevention of failure of pressurised and high-energy components and systems has been an important issue in design of all types of power and process plants. Each individual component of these systems must be dimensioned such that it can resist the forces or moments to which it will be subjected during normal service and upset conditions. Design by analysis is an important philosophy of modern design. The ability of now-a-days computers to numerically handle complex mathematical problems has inspired the use highly nonlinear material behaviour (including material softening) instead of classical linear constitutive theory for the materials. Under the influence of these developments, a fundamentally different type of modelling has emerged, in which fracture is considered as the ultimate consequence of a material degradation process. Crack initiation and growth then follow naturally from the standard continuum mechanics theory (called continuum damage mechanics). Numerical analyses based on these so-called local damage models, however, are often found to depend on the spatial discretisation (i.e., mesh size of the numerical method used). The growth of damage tends to localise in the smallest band that can be captured by the spatial discretisation. As a consequence, increasingly finer discretisation grids can lead to crack initiation earlier in the loading history and to faster crack growth. This non-physical behaviour is caused by the fact that the localisation of damage in a vanishing volume is no longer consistent with the concept of a continuous damage field, which forms the basis of the continuum damage mechanics approach. In this work, the Rousellier’s damage model has been extended to its nonlocal form using damage parameter ‘d’ as a degree of freedom. The finite element (FE) equations have been derived using the weak form of the governing equations for both mechanical force equilibrium and the damage equilibrium. As an example, a standard fracture mechanics specimen [SE(B)] made up of a German low alloy steel has been analysed in 2D plane strain condition using different mesh sizes near the crack tip. The results of the nonlocal model has been compared with experimental results as well as with those predicted by the local model. It was observed that the fracture resistance predicted by the local damage model goes on decreasing when the mesh size near the crack tip is refined whereas the nonlocal model predicts a converged fracture resistance behaviour which compares well with the experimentally determined behaviour.Copyright