Fracture toughness curve shift method
The purpose of this task is to examine the technical basis for the currently accepted methods for shifting fracture toughness curves to account for irradiation damage, and to work through national codes and standards bodies to revise those methods, if a change is warranted. During this reporting period, data from all the relevant HSSI Programs were acquired and stored in a database and evaluated. The results from that evaluation have been prepared in a draft letter report and are summarized here. A method employing Weibull statistics was applied to analyze fracture toughness properties of unirradiated and irradiated pressure vessel steels. Application of the concept of a master curve for irradiated materials was examined and used to measure shifts of fracture toughness transition curves. It was shown that the maximum likelihood approach gave good estimations of the reference temperature, T{sub o}, determined by rank method and could be used for analyzing of data sets where application of the rank method did not prove to be feasible. It was shown that, on average, the fracture toughness shifts generally exceeded the Charpy 41-J shifts; a linear least-squares fit to the data set yielded a slope of 1.15. The observed dissimilarity was analyzed by taking into account differences in effects of irradiation on Charpy impact and fracture toughness properties. Based on these comparisons, a procedure to adjust Charpy 41-J shifts for achieving a more reliable correlation with the fracture toughness shifts was evaluated. An adjustment consists of multiplying the 41-J energy level by the ratio of unirradiated to irradiated Charpy upper shelves to determine an irradiated transition temperature, and then subtracting the unirradiated transition temperature determined at 41 J. For LUS welds, however, an unirradiated level of 20 J (15 ft-1b) was used for the corresponding adjustment for irradiated material.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States); Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States). Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research
- OSTI ID:
- 223658
- Report Number(s):
- NUREG/CR--5591-Vol.6-No.1; ON: DE96002233
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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