A Review of Crack Arrest Tests, Models and Applications

TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 521/1995

C S Wiesner and B Hayes

Background

This review was undertaken to provide an overview and critical assessment of crack arrest methods and applications, a pool of crack arrest data for pressure vessel and structural steels and recommendations for future research in this area. To achieve this, the following programme of work was devised:

Stage 1

Collection of published papers and crack arrest data;

Stage 2

Extraction of information from the published literature to build up concise pictures of the approaches and models proposed by different researchers and to summarise the findings of large collaborative programmes;

Stage 3

Critical assessment of the different models and applications; pooling of crack arrest data and consideration of future research requirements.

The work was funded by the UK Health and Safety Executive.

Objectives

• To pool experimental data and information on the applications and theories of crack arrest resulting from past research programmes.
• To review critically the results and methodologies of recent developments in the crack arrest field.
• To assess the applicability of the crack arrest approach for structural integrity considerations and to give recommendations for further work.