Relevance of fracture mechanics to creep crack growth

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Creep-fatigue crack growth testing and analysis of pre-strained 316H stainless steel

Material pre-straining is known to have significant effects of the mechanical response and crack growth behaviour of steels. In this paper, the influence of material pre-straining on the subsequent creep-fatigue crack growth behaviour of Type 316H stainless steel at 550 °C has been examined by performing tests on compact tension specimens that were extracted from blocks uniformly pre-compressed at room temperature. Creep-fatigue crack growth tests on pre-compressed material were performed at the frequency of 0.01 Hz and R-ratio of 0.1. The crack growth data obtained from these experiments have been correlated with the C* and K fracture mechanics parameters and the results are compared with the existing creep crack growth data on the pre-compressed and as-received material at 550 °C. The results obtained have also been compared with the creep-fatigue data from experiments on weldments where the crack tip was located in the heat affected zone (HAZ). The crack growth behaviour in creep-fatigue tests on pre-compressed material has been found similar to that of HAZ material and are higher than that of the as-received material. Moreover, depending on the loading condition and frequency the crack growth data obtained from creep-fatigue tests on pre-compressed material may be characterized using C* or ΔK fracture mechanics parameters

An investigation of irregular crack path effects on fracture mechanics parameters using a grain microstructure meshing technique

Electronic version of an article published as Journal of Multiscale Modeling, Vol. 4, Iss. 1, atricle 1250001, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S1756973712500011 © World Scientific Publishing Company, http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/jmmA sub-grain size finite element modelling approach is presented in this paper to investigate variations in fracture mechanics parameters for irregular crack paths. The results can be used when modelling intergranular and transgranular crack growth where creep and fatigue are the dominant failure mechanisms and their crack paths are irregular. A novel method for sub-grain scale finite element mesh consisting of multiple elements encased in ~50–150 μm-sized grains has been developed and implemented in a compact tension, C(T), mesh structure. The replicated shapes and dimensions were derived from an isotropic metallic grain structure using representative random sized grain shapes repeated in sequence ahead of the crack tip. In this way the effects of crack tip angle ahead of the main crack path can be considered in a more realistic manner. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis has been performed for elastic and elastic-plastic materials using ABAQUS and the stress distributions, the stress intensity factor and the J-integral have been evaluated for irregular crack paths and compared to those of obtained from analytical solutions. To examine the local and macroscopic graph path effects on fracture mechanics parameters, a few extreme cases with various crack-tip angles have been modelled by keeping the macroscopic crack path parallel to the axis of symmetry. The numerical solutions from these granular mesh structures have been found in relatively good agreement with analytical solutions

Plastic pre-compression and creep damage effects on the fracture toughness behaviour of Type 316H stainless steel

The influence of inelastic damage in the form of plastic pre-strain and creep damage, on fracture toughness of Type 316H stainless steel has been examined. Creep damage has been introduced into the 8% pre-compressed material by interrupting creep crack growth tests. Comparisons have been made between the fracture toughness test results from the as-received, pre-compressed and creep damaged materials. Furthermore, the effects of creep crack discontinuities on the crack tip strain fields have been examined by digital image correlation measurements. Inelastic damage was found to reduce the fracture toughness of the material, with creep damage having more severe effects than pre-strain

Effects of plastic pre-straining level on the creep deformation, crack initiation and growth behaviour of 316H stainless steel

The effects of the material pre-straining level, in the form of plastic pre-compression at room temperature, on the tensile, creep deformation, creep crack initiation and growth behaviour of 316H stainless steel have been examined at 550 °C. Experiments have been performed on the 4%, 8% and 12% pre-compressed specimens and the results are compared with existing data on the pre-compressed material to investigate the change in mechanical response, creep failure, creep crack initiation and growth behaviour of 316H over a range of plastic pre-straining levels. Comparisons are also made to short term and long term test data on the as-received material. It has been found that creep ductility and rupture times decreased with an increase in pre-strain levels considered. The test results obtained from different material states are discussed in terms of the influence of material pre-straining level on the microstructural deformation, mechanical response, creep deformation and crack growth behaviour of the material

Determination of long-term creep properties for 316H steel using short-term tests on pre-strained material

Determination of long-term creep rupture properties for 316H steel is both costly and time-consuming and given the level of scatter in the data would need substantial number of tests to be performed. The primary objective of this study is to estimate the long-term creep properties of cross-weld (XW) and as-received (AR) 316H stainless steel by performing accelerated tests on pre-compressed (PC) material. In this work, uniaxial creep rupture tests have been performed on XW specimens and the results have been used to establish a correlation with accelerated test results on the PC material. Moreover, tensile tests have been performed on XW specimens at room temperature and 550 °C to examine the pre-conditioning effects on the mechanical response of the material. Similar power-law creep properties have been found for the creep strain rate and rupture time behaviour of the XW and PC specimens. It also has been found that the creep ductility data points obtained from XW and PC specimens fall upon the estimated trend for the AR material at 550 °C when the data are correlated with the applied stress normalised by 0.2% proof stress. The results show that the long-term creep properties of the XW and AR material can be estimated in much shorter time scales simply by performing tests on the PC material state

Prediction of reheat cracking behaviour in a service exposed 316H steam header

Reheat cracking in an ex-service Type 316H stainless steel steam header component has been investigated in this study. The examined steam header was in service for 87,790" role="presentation" style="display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border-width: 0px; border-style: initial; position: relative;">h and the cracks in this component were found in the vicinity of the weld toe. The root cause of this type of failure was due to the welding residual stresses. The welding-induced residual stresses had been present in the header at the early stage of the operation and were released during service. In this paper, a novel technique has been proposed to simulate the residual stress distribution normal to the crack direction by applying remote fixed displacement boundary conditions in an axisymmetric model. This approach can simulate the presence of residual stresses in actual components without the need to develop full weld simulation to quantify them. The predicted residual stress levels and distributions normal to the crack direction have been found in good agreement with the measured residual stresses available in the literature for a similar header. The creep crack growth (CCG) rates have been characterized using the fracture mechanics C∗" role="presentation" style="display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border-width: 0px; border-style: initial; position: relative;">C∗C∗ parameter and estimated using predictive models

Aging of mesenchymal stem cell in vitro

BACKGROUND: A hot new topic in medical treatment is the use of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) in therapy. The low frequency of this subpopulation of stem cells in bone marrow (BM) necessitates their in vitro expansion prior to clinical use. We evaluated the effect of long term culture on the senescence of these cells. RESULTS: The mean long term culture was 118 days and the mean passage number was 9. The average number of PD decreased from 7.7 to 1.2 in the 10th passage. The mean telomere length decreased from 9.19 Kbp to 8.7 kbp in the 9th passage. Differentiation potential dropped from the 6th passage on. The culture's morphological abnormalities were typical of the Hayflick model of cellular aging. CONCLUSION: We believe that MSC enter senescence almost undetectably from the moment of in vitro culturing. Simultaneously these cells are losing their stem cell characteristics. Therefore, it is much better to consider them for cell and gene therapy early on

Evaluation of Two-Parameter Approaches to Describe Crack-Tip Fields in Engineering Structures

The application of two-parameter approaches to describe crack-tip stress fields has generally focused on Ramberg-Osgood (RO

PVP2008-61513 NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION TO EXAMINE THE EFFECT OF INTRODUCING A CRACK IN A RESIDUAL STRESS FIELD

ABSTRACT This paper presents a detailed two dimensional finiteelement study to examine the effect of introducing a crack either progressively or instantaneously into a residual stress field. A progressive crack is defined as a crack which is introduced in fixed increments of crack extension until the desired crack length is achieved. An instantaneous crack is one in which a crack of the required length is introduced instantaneously into the finiteelement mesh. Inspection is made of the crack tip fields and the crack opening displacements. A modified definition of the Jintegral, which accounts for the initial plastic strain due to residual stress, is assessed, in order to examine its ability to characterise the intensity of the near crack tip fields. The implications of the results on fracture assessment of structural components are discussed