Computational evaluation of resistance of fracture capacity for SUS304L of liquefied natural gas insulation system under cryogenic temperatures using ABAQUS user-defined material subroutine

• Cryogenic (−163 °C) fracture toughness value of SUS304L was investigated.
• It was revealed that important results of fracture toughness tests can be obtained numerically.
• A systematic approach to perform computational fracture toughness test was proposed.

A computational method for evaluating the resistance of fracture capacity of austenitic stainless steel (SUS304L) under ambient and cryogenic temperatures was proposed in the present study. To do this, a unified elasto-viscoplastic-damage model which can take into consideration the material nonlinearity under cryogenic temperature was adopted and implicitly formulated. In addition, the developed model is implemented into ABAQUS as a type of user-defined material subroutine UMAT. In order to verify the proposed method, the simulation results of resistance of fracture capacity are compared to a series of crack tests such as double-edge-cracked and center-cracked tension tests of SUS304L plates under ambient and cryogenic temperatures. Namely, the relationships between force and displac