ASSESSMENT OF DUCTILE FRACTURE RESISTANCE BASED ON AN ENGINEERING APPROACH

This report summarizes an engineering approach for analyzing fracture behavior in the ductile range and its application to flawed 304 stainless steel piping. Following a brief description of the engineering approach, crack initiation, stable growth, and instability studies are presented for several cases of flawed pipe geometry under various loading conditions. The effect of flaw type and size, pipe diameter and length, and applied loading on the failure load and mechanism is investigated. Results are examined against predictions of the net-section stress failure criterion which is an alternate approach for examining the integrity of flawed 304 SS piping.