An upper-shelf fracture toughness master curve for ferritic steels

When assessing the resistance of a steel structure to failure under load, fracture toughness is a key input variable. Since it is usually not possible to establish a priori if the anticipated service temperature (or temperatures) is in the fracture mode transition or on the upper shelf, it is useful to know the temperature dependence of fracture toughness in both the transition and on the upper shelf. In the transition, the master curve proposed by Wallin defines both the variation of the median value of fracture toughness with temperature and the scatter of fracture toughness about this median value. However, Wallin's master curve does not quantify fracture toughness on the upper shelf. In this paper we assemble a database of upper shelf fracture toughness data (JIc) for ferritic steels. These data demonstrate that the temperature dependence of upper JIc is consistent for all ferritic steels contained in the database and has the same form as the temperature dependence of the flow strength anticipated from dislocation mechanics considerations. This similarity between the temperature dependence of flow strength and the temperature dependence of JIc is physically expected because both directly depend upon the energy required for dislocation mobility in the ferrite matrix. Both the empirically derived model and the physical basis for the model are described.