Mechanical

 Proper8es  of  Materials,  

Processing  and  Design    
Exercises  Lesson  4.  Fracture  mechanics  

Diego  Ferreño  Blanco  

Borja  Arroyo  MarCnez  
José  Antonio  Casado  del  Prado  
Department  of  Terrain  and  Materials  Science  and  Engineering  

This  work  is  published  under  a  license:  

Crea=ve  Commons  BY-­‐NC-­‐SA  4.0  
 DEPARTAMENTO DE CIENCIA E INGENIERÍA DEL
TERRENO Y LOS MATERIALES

ETS de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos

MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF MATERIALS 2019-2020

4: Fracture Mechanics

1. A large steel plate will be subjected to a mode I stress state (tensile mode). The design stress is
  0.5ꞏ u , where  u represents the material's tensile strength; the sensitivity of the device
used to detect defects is 2 mm . In order to reduce the weight of the structure it is proposed to
change the heat treatment of the steel to raise its ultimate stress from 1500 MPa to
2000 MPa .

Simultaneously, as a result of this heat treatment, a reduction in the toughness, K Ic , will take
place, from 70 MPaꞏm1 2 to 35 MPaꞏm1 2 . Assuming plane strain conditions and knowing that
the inspection has given a negative result, decide if this proposal is recommended.

Once the appropriate treatment has been done and during an inspection previous to the
installation of the plate, a through-thickness crack with a semi-length 2.4 mm is observed.
Furthermore, it is found that the real work stress exceeds by 10 % that considered in the design
stage. Determine whether the installation of the plate is compatible with the safety of the
structure or not.

Data: K I    a ;  Y  0.8ꞏ u

2. For the construction of a 6 m -diameter spherical tank to store pressurized nitrogen, a plate with
thickness e  35 mm is going to be used. The plate is made of a steel with a yield stress of
490 MPa and in which some cracks ( 6 mm deep) were detected.

The maximum working pressure is 9.8 MPa , corresponding to the highest storage temperature
predicted ( 0 º C ). Given the possibility that that temperature decreases, a set of tests to
determine the influence of temperature on the fracture toughness are performed, obtaining as a
result the following graph:
 160

140

120

)
100

1/2
KIc (MPa∙m
80

60

40

20

0
-110 -100 -90 -80 -70 -60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20

T (ºC)

a) Determine the minimum safety factor guaranteed by a classical calculation.

b) Determine the storage temperature range that maintains a fracture safety factor equal or
higher than the one obtained in a).

It can be assumed that nitrogen behaves like a perfect gas and, for calculation purposes, surface
cracks can be considered elliptically shaped, with a stress intensity factor given by:

 a
K I  2.42ꞏ ꞏ a  1.19  
 e

being ' ' the applied stress, ' a ' the crack depth and ' e ' the thickness of the plate.

3. Obtain the critical value a crack in a wire ( K I  1.2  a ) working under an applied stress of
   Y 1.2 , applying the following methods:

a) With the stress intensity factor procedure, considering the Irwin corrections for the local
plasticity (plane strain).
b) Using the failure assessment diagram (FAD) attached.

Compare the results obtained.

KI 
Kr  ; Lr  ;  Y  600 MPa ; K Ic  120 MPaꞏm1 2
K Ic Y
 1.1

1.0

0.9

0.8

0.7

0.6
Kr
0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0.0
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1

Lr

4. A large metallic plate with cracks of length 2a  20 mm is subjected to working stresses of

50 , 150 , 250 y 350 MPa . Moreover, the material properties over time change as shown in
the following table:

t  años  0 5 10 15 20
 Y  MPa  500 510 540 565 585

K Ic  MPaꞏm1 2  150 135 120 100 85

a) Represent in the failure assessment diagram the evolution of the safety conditions in years
0 , 10 and 20 .
b) Which is the most critical condition?
c) Determine the period of time during which a safety factor higher than 1.2 is guaranteed.

KI 
Kr  Lr 
K Ic Y
5. The Structural Integrity of vessels and pressure vessels of American design is regulated by the
ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) code. This document provides expressions
to obtain the stress intensity factor, SIF, assuming that the vessel has a very conservative
postulated crack, elliptically-shaped, with a depth (crack length), a , equal to one quarter of the
thickness of the wall, t , ( a  t 4 ) and length 1.5ꞏt .

For the simplest case considered in the code the expression for the SIF, assuming an axial defect
(crack plane contains the axis of the cylinder), is the following ( p being the pressure and Ri
the internal radius of the vessel):

K I  MPa  m1 2   0.450  t  m   p  MPa  

Ri
t

The component to be studied is a cylindrical vessel of thickness 20 cm and an internal radius

4.5 m , that is subjected to two working cycles that involve different pressure and temperature
conditions as shown in the following table. Both temperatures belong to the ductile to brittle
transition region (DBTR) of the steel that constitutes the vessel

CICLO T º C  p  MPa 
1 -10 6
2 -50 18

Recently, there has been developed an approach that describes the behavior of a broad family of
steels in the DBTR, known as the Master Curve, which reproduces the statistical dispersion of
toughness in the DBTR, see the attached figure, including the failure possibility as a parameter.
Toughness depends exclusively on the so-called Reference Temperature that, for the steel

considered in this problem, is equal to T0  100º C . The toughness, K C MPa  m1 2 , as a
function of the temperature, T  º C  , for a failure probability of 5% and 1%, respectively,
corresponds to the following expressions (with an upper bound also included)

K C , 0.05  25.2  36.6  e 0.019T T0 

0.019T T0 
K C ,0.01  23.5  24.4  e
K C  200 MPaꞏm1 2

From all this information, analyze the fracture behavior of the vessel in each of the working
cycles.