Failure analysis of stainless steel at elevated temperatures

In this paper, particular emphasis has been put on gathering information on the phenomena that take place at the crack tip of a crack propagating at 1100°F. Since the experimental program was directed toward studying crack propagation in tubing, the tests were conducted on rings.From the experimentally obtained data and from the correlation with the theoretically predicted values, the following picture emerges for the fracture behavior with full plasticity present. There is a region surrounding the crack tip where very large plastic deformations take place. This region is surrounded by a much larger region where the loading is nearly proportional and the behavior can be predicted well by the results of the deformation theory of plasticity and the theory of singularity fields. As the crack propagation initiates, there is a drastic change in the crack-tip configuration. The crack tip does not blunt and a fairly sharp crack-tip region is observed. The crack tip carries a large deformation field of a far more localized nature than that observed at the initiation of the crack growth.Paper was presented at 1978 SESA Spring Meeting held in Wichita, KS on May 14–19.