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Effects of notch position of the Charpy impact specimen on the failure behavior in heat affected zone
Y.C. Jang a , J.K. Hong b , J.H. Park b , D.W. Kim a , Y. Lee a,
a b

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 156-756, Republic of Korea Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, Changwon, Kyungnam 641-101, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e
Keywords: Notch position

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Experimental and numerical studies were performed to examine the effects of notch position on the failure behavior and energy absorption when the Charpy V-notch impact test is made at 1 C. Carbon steel plate (SA-516 Gr. 70) with thickness of 25 mm usually used for pressure vessel was welded by Shielded Metal-Arc Welding method and specimens were fabricated from the welded plate. The Charpy impact tests were then performed with specimens having different notch positions varying within HAZ. A series of 3-D FE analysis which simulates the Charpy test are carried out as well. The FE analysis takes into account the heterogeneous mechanical properties in HAZ. Results reveal that the absorbed energies during impact test depend signicantly on the notch position. Experimentally measured energy is in agreement with computed one when the notch is positioned by 1.5 mm from the fusion line. 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Charpy impact test Energy absorption Failure simulation

1.

Introduction

The Charpy V-notch test is a standardized high strain-rate test which can measure the amount of energy absorption of material. This test was rst proposed more than a century ago (Russel, 1898; Charpy, 1901). This absorbed energy is a measure of a given materials toughness and acts as a tool to study brittle-ductile transition, depending upon the test temperature. With this test, one can evaluate reliability of weld joint component and/or structure based on measured energy absorption of material (specimen) and understanding deformation and failure process during test. The specimen is composed of three parts, weld, heat affected zone (HAZ) and base material. These have different mechanical properties. Consequently it causes stress mismatch between them. Hence, stress eld at the ahead of notch is signicantly dependent upon the position of Vnotch along weld, HAZ and base material and subsequently

the energy that the specimen absorb during impact test is different. In this light, Hong et al. (2007) performed the Charpy Vnotch test with notch position varied within HAZ and reported the absorbed energy is inuenced by notch position relative to various microstructures and is reduced as notch position closes to base material. Moltubakk et al. (1999) studied the inuence of notch positioning on the fracture behavior experimentally with 3-point bending test and calculated Weibull stress distribution in HAZ with 2-D FE analysis. Tvergaard and Needleman (1988) performed FE analysis to investigate brittle-to-ductile failure transition for different weld joint under condition of plane strain deformation. They studied failure behavior of weld, HAZ and base material (HY100) while moving the notch position in the weld. They reported energy for crack propagation is very sensitive to the relative location of notch in the weld and brittle failure might occur as notch closes to HAZ. Tvergaard and Needleman (1986)

Corresponding author. E-mail address: ysl@cau.ac.kr (Y. Lee). 0924-0136/$ see front matter 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2007.11.272

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also examined the effect of rate sensitivity on the failure mode with 2-D FE analysis. Eberle et al. (2000) carried out 2-D FE analysis of the Charpy V-notch specimen to calculate JR -curve for German standard steel StE 460. The computed JR -curve was then compared with experimentally measured one. For homogeneous material, full three-dimensional FE analysis of the Charpy V-notch test was presented rst time by Mathur and Needleman (1994). Tvergaard and Needleman (2004) presented full three-dimensional FE analysis to investigate the sensitivity to where the notch across the HAZ layer and comparison made with test specimen where the notch is cut on the face parallel to the surface of the test piece. Many studies presented so far have performed FE analysis with assuming that HAZ is of homogeneous mechanical properties. However, HAZ has various microstructures and consequently different mechanical properties. In addition, reproducibility of the Charpy V-notch test for the study of notch position has been always problematic because test results usually exhibits a large scatter. Note it is almost impossible to control alignment of the notch position in micrometer scale during test. Hence, a full 3-D FE analysis which can simulate quantitatively the effect of non-uniform distribution of mechanical properties in HAZ on energy absorption is highly desirable. In this study, we divided HAZ into three regions based on experimentally measured Vickers hardness and distributed the mechanical properties in HAZ and the notch is positioned in the three regions accordingly. A series of three-dimensional FE analysis is then carried out to capture the effect of not position. Computed absorbed energy is compared with experimentally measured one and issue on the location of notch in the Charpy V-notch test specimen is discussed. The material used in this study is SA-516 Gr.70.

Table 1 Yield stress and ultimate tensile strength assigned to nite elements analysis Weld
y u

W-HAZ
630 940

C-HAZ
500 740

B-HAZ
400 620

Base material
360 535

(MPa) (MPa)

480 720

Fig. 1 Schematic of cross-section of welded plate.

method. The welding condition of the specimen is as follows: current = 110170 A, voltage = 3035 V, travel speed = 1215 cm/min and inter-pass temperature = 54 C. Maximum heat input was 1617 kJ/cm and a half-K weld groove instead of V groove was used to distribute material properties in HAZ to thickness direction of welded plate.

2.3.

Specimen

2. The Charpy test, welding condition and specimen

2.1. The Charpy test

Once welding and subsequent cooling is nished, specimens (marked in dashed line) are then sampled as shown in Fig. 1. The specimens marked in dashed line as rectangular shape is paralleling to the surface of welded plate and is taken at the location of 1/4 t (t is the thickness of welded plate). The specimens are prepared such that the notch is located at different positions. To study the effect of notch position in HAZ on the absorbed energy, we have three types of specimens having different notch positions in HAZ (Fig. 2). In other words, the location of notch varies within HAZ.

3.
3.1.

Numerical simulation
Finite element analysis

The Charpy test was performed according to standard test methods for notch bar impact testing of metallic materials (ASTM E 23-02). The total length of the specimen is 55 mm and the rectangular cross-section area is 10 mm 10 mm. Specimen has a V-shaped notch with a ank angle of 45 and depth of 2 mm. The tip radius of notch is 0.25 mm. The radius of striking edge is 8 mm. Before test, specimen is positioned upon two anvils with a span of 40 mm.

2.2.

Welding condition

The SA-516, carbon steel plate (C: 0.18%, Si: 0.3%, Mn: 1.15%, P: 0.014%, S: 0.03%, Cu: 0.17%, Ni: 0.31%, Cr: 0.02%, Mo: 0.098%, V: 0.026%, Nb: 0.016%) generally used for pressure vessel, was chosen for this study. The chemical compositions of SA-516 Gr. 70 steel is given in Table 1. The material has yield strength of 360 MPa, ultimate strength of 540 MPa and an elongation of 34%. The welded joint with thickness of 25 mm plate is fabricated with Shielded Metal-Arc Welding (SMAW)

Three-dimensional nite element analysis was conducted using ABAQUS, a commercial FEA code (Version 6.6-1). An half of the specimen was analyzed due to geometrical symmetry of the specimen and loading condition. The three-dimensional mesh of specimen is shown in Fig. 3. Since we focus on the variation of absorbed energy of specimen, signicant mesh renement is given around the area that considerable plastic ow occurs. Element type for the specimens is C3D8R, but element type for transition mesh region is C3D4. The number of elements used is 39,000. The edge length of smallest element at the notch root is 250 m. For arbitrary crack growth simulation, Needleman (1987) adopted a cohesive force model in which the fracture characteristics of the material are embedded in a cohesive surface traction-displacement separation relation for all elements in the material. But obtaining the material parameters characterizing the cohesive surface separation law is quite complicated. Crack growth simulation was also performed using an element

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Fig. 2 Specimens with different notch positions in HAZ. NT-1, NT-2 and NT-3 indicate that notch is located 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 mm from fusion line.

3.2.

Hardness variation in the HAZ

Fig. 3 Representative nite element mesh of the Charpy test specimen.

removing method (Tvergaard, 1982) which requires information on a prescribed stress or strain around the crack tip to evaluate whether or not the crack will grow further. When the crack tip passes a material point occupied by an element ahead of the initial crack tip, the element is assumed to vanish, which is realized by reducing the magnitude of the nodal forces to be proportional to the fraction of the length that the crack tip has traversed in the failed element. In this study, we use the element removing method for simulating crack propagation. During the removing step, no additional load increments are applied, and no other elements vanish. This guarantees that the reduction of internal force to zero has no effect on the computed crack path. The striking edge has initial velocity of 6 m/s.

Generally, the grains on the heat affected zone adjacent to the fusion line are more coarsening compared with those of other areas, and therefore they have lower toughness values (Taillard et al., 1995; Devillers et al., 1993). However, according to several surveillance test reports (Hong, 1997), toughness of the HAZ was reported to be higher than that of base material. This implies the mechanical properties might be dependent of welding condition and chemical components of material. Therefore, we must measure the mechanical properties directly through performing a series of tensile test (or compressive test if necessary), but we cannot perform the test for HAZ since we are in trouble in making specimen suitable for the test. Note that width of HAZ is so narrow that one cannot make specimen for tensile test. For the reason, we rely on an alternative which yields the mechanical property. The alternative is that we rst measure the hardness of base material, HAZ and weld and then calculate yield strength of them from the measured hardness. The hardness measured across base material, HAZ and weld is shown in Fig. 4. This hardness conguration points out the mechanical properties in HAZ is quite heterogeneous. A correlation between Vickers hardness, Hv and yield strength, y used in this study is in the followings. Hv = C
y

(1)

Fig. 4 Measured Vickers hardness at weld, HAZ and base material.

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Fig. 5 HAZ is divided into three regions for nite element analysis. Two cases are considered. W-HAZ is a region adjacent to the weld fusion line, C-HAZ is a center region of HAZ and B-HAZ is a region adjacent to the base material.

C is proportionality constant. Rationale for this relation is as follows. It has been found that the measured hardness of base material is equal to the measured yield strength of base material multiplied by a constant 3. Ultimate tensile stress, u necessary for failure simulation, is also assigned accordingly with referring to Kim and Yoon (1998). Mechanical properties employed in the study are summarized in Table 1. As strain rates of material increase, its yield strength increases as well. For many common metals this effect starts to play a role in the deformation behavior and crack propagation. This study applies yield stress ratio, / 0 . is ow stress and 0 is static yield stress. In mild steel, yield stress ratio is in the range 2.02.8 (Folch and Burdekin, 1999). In this study, yield stress was assumed 2.0.

a prescribed failure strain, ductile damage initiation criterion (DUCTCRT) is triggered at an element and then the magnitude of the elemental nodal forces is reduced to be proportional to the fraction of the length that the notch tip has traversed in the failed element. The failure strain of the each material are assumed as follows; base material = 0.3, W-HAZ = 0.26, C-HAZ = 0.27, B-HAZ = 0.29 and weld = 0.28.

4.
4.1.

Results and discussion

Energy absorbed during impact

3.3.

Notch position

To investigate the effect of inhomogeneous distribution of mechanical properties in HAZ on the crack propagation behavior and absorbed energy of specimen during test, HAZ with width of 2 mm is divided into three regions which have different mechanical properties as shown in Fig. 5. The width of each region (W-HAZ, C-HAZ and B-HAZ) is different. Two cases are considered according to different width of each region. In Case I, the width of W-HAZ is 1.0 mm and C-HAZ and that of B-HAZ is 0.5 mm, respectively. In Case II, the width of W-HAZ and C-HAZ is 0.5 mm, respectively and that of B-HAZ is 1.0 mm. Notch position for each case is designated as NT-1, NT-2 and NT-3, corresponding to the notch positions in Fig. 5. Yield stresses calculated by using Eq. (1) and ultimate tensile stresses are assigned to the elements belonging to the regions (W-HAZ, C-HAZ and B-HAZ) designated above. If equivalent plastic strain at an element reaches

Fig. 6 compares experimentally measured absorbed energy with computed one in terms of the notch position (NT-1, NT-2 and NT-3) at HAZ. When the notch is adjacent to the fusion line (i.e., NT-1), the energy absorption measured is larger than calculated one. This indicates the ultimate tensile strength and yield stress of specimen adjacent to the fusion line is higher than those set to nite element model. Especially, much larger difference is observed in Case I, in comparison with Case II. The difference of the absorbed energy between the NT-1 of Case I and NT-1 of Case II is approximately 60 J. But the difference reduces when notch is located at NT-2. In the NT-3 of Cases I and II, the energy absorption measured is similar to calculated one. In NT-1 of Case I, crack passes through W-HAZ (which has higher u and y ) but, in Case II, it does not pass through W-HAZ. The crack of the NT-3 of Cases I and II, passes through base material as well. This result indicates the difference of the absorbed energy depends on crack growth path as well. A detail explanation for this is given in the following section. For Cases I and II, a good agreement is noted when notch is located at NT-3. These results imply that the notch might be located near the base material when we makes specimen for the Charpy impact test.

4.2.

Crack propagation

Fig. 6 Energy absorption experimentally measured is compared with computed one in terms of notch positions (NT-1, NT-2 and NT-3) at HAZ (see Fig. 5).

Fig. 7 illustrates the contour of ductile damage initiation of elements being deformed and three stages for crack propagation in deformed state. If DUCTCRT is 1.0, the element is about to be failed and then crack starts propagating. If DUCTCRT is zero, the elements do not reach the prescribed failure strain as yet. It illustrates 2-D conguration of crack propagation for Case I. If whole HAZ is assigned as homogeneous

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Fig. 7 Contour of ductile damage initiation criterion and equivalent plastic strain. NT-1, NT-2 and NT-3 specify that CL (center line) of notch is located at 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 mm from fusion line (see Fig. 5).

mechanical properties, crack propagation direction is straight. However, when inhomogeneous mechanical properties are assigned, the direction of crack propagation is not straight any more. Fig. 7(a) shows when notch is located between WHAZ and C-HAZ (i.e., NT-1 in Case I), the crack passes through C-HAZ region and propagates toward the B-HAZ region and base material. Fig. 7(b) (i.e., NT-2 in Case I) and Fig. 7(c) (i.e., NT-3 in Case I) also show that the crack progresses toward the B-HAZ and base material. However, the amount of crack growth direction turned toward the B-HAZ region and base material is different, as can be shown. Fig. 7(d) illustrates the direction of maximum stress triaxiality (negative pressure stress/von Mises stress) and the equivalent plastic strain distribution at the notch. When stress triaxiality is large, failure starts easily. At notch tip, the stress triaxialilty of element to impact direction is the maximum. Regardless of homogeneous material and inhomogeneous material, the maximum stress triaxiality is toward impact direction. However, the crack growth direction is strongly dependent of the distribution of equivalent plastic strain. This is because B-HAZ and C-HAZ region has lower u (UTS) and y (yield stress) than W-HAZ. Initially the crack does not go along the impact direction but its propagation direction becomes

coincident with the impact direction after the crack tip meets the base material.

5.

Concluding remarks

Experimental and numerical studies have been made in the present work to examine the effect of inhomogeneous mechanical properties in HAZ on energy absorption. Notch position in HAZ was divided into three sub-regions which have different mechanical properties. Vickers hardness test on the specimen also shows the mechanical properties vary to a great extend. The results of 3-D FE analysis showed the energy that specimen absorbed during impact test is strongly dependent of the relative notch position in HAZ. The energy absorption experimentally measured is in agreement with computed one when the notch of the specimen is displaced by 1.5 mm from the fusion line.

Acknowledgement
Y. Lee wishes to acknowledge the nancial support from the Korean Science and Engineering Foundation (R01-2006-00010358-0 (2006)).

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