Constraint effect on fracture toughness resistance curves of an X60 pipe steel

The fracture toughness resistance curve (e.g. J-R curve and crack tip opening displacement (CTOD) or δ-R curve) is important in facilitating strain-based design and integrity assessment of oil and gas pipelines, where influence of ground movements and presence of planar weld flaws must be accounted for. In this paper, duplicate single edge bend (SE(B)) and clamped single edge tension (SE(T)) specimens with two different initial crack sizes were prepared from an X60 pipe steel. The longitudinally-oriented specimens were notched in the through-thickness direction and experimentally tested at room temperature. In general, the results showed the expected trends of higher resistance curves for both shallow-cracked versus deeply-cracked specimen types and tension versus bending loading modes. Eleven constraint parameters (i.e. QHRR, QSSY, QLM, QBM, A 2, A 2BM , h, Tz, Cp, Ap, Vp ) were calculated based on three-dimensional (3-D) finite element analyses (FEA) for various tested SE(B) and SE(T) specimens. The results and analysis indicated that the shallow-cracked SE(B) specimens exhibited a constraint condition similar to the intrinsically low-constraint deeply-cracked SE(T) specimens. Among all of the constraint parameters, the Ap parameter based on the normalized equivalent plastic strain contour was found to have the most promising trend in terms of correlating the material’s toughness to constraint level for currently tested specimens. Further on-going investigations are underway to extend the evaluation to resistance curves for specimens made from X100, X80 and X70 pipe steels to allow for the characterization of strain hardening effect, as well as the evaluation of their associated weld metals and heat affected zones (HAZs).