BASIC ASPECTS OF CRACK GROWTH AND FRACTURE

Abstract

A near approach to absolute fracture safety in boiling water (BW) and pressurized water (PW) nuclear reactor pressure vessels requires a very conservative fracture control plan. Such a plan must assume that any plausible cracklike defect, which has not been proved absent by inspection, may exist in the vessel. Requirements for design, materials, and inspection may then be established in a conservative way relative to estimates of progressive crack extension behavior. These estimates are assisted by elastic and plastic methods of analysis of cracks in tension. Approximate methods of assigning K sub Lc values to measurements of crack toughness in terms of a brittle-ductile transition temperature are valuable in reviewing methods of fracture control which have received trial in the past, such as the NRL fracture analysis diagram and the leak-before-break toughness criterion.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 21, 1967
Accession Number
AD0663882

Entities

People

  • A. A. Wells
  • G. R. Irwin
  • J. M. Krafft
  • P. C. Paris

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Chemistry
  • Cracks
  • Ferrium
  • Fracture (Mechanics)
  • Iron
  • Materials
  • Mechanical Working
  • Mechanics
  • Stress Corrosion
  • Stress Strain Relations
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Test Methods
  • Transition Temperature
  • Yield Strength

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Environmental Engineering
  • Materials Science (Mechanical Engineering).