Evaluation of Pre-strain Effect on Abnormal Fracture Occurrence in Drop-Weight Tear Test for Linepipe Steel with High Charpy Energy

Brittle fracture control is one of the most important subjects in natural gas transmission pipeline in order to maintain structural integrity over several decades. The Drop Weight Tear Test (DWTT) is widely used as the test method to evaluate the resistance against the brittle fracture for linepipe steels. However, an abnormal fracture frequently occurs during the DWTT in recent high toughness line pipe steels. The abnormal fracture is also known as inverse fracture. The abnormal fracture is defined as the cleavage fracture is observed at the hammer side in DWTT specimen although the ductile fracture firstly initiates from the notch tip side. Many studies for abnormal fracture appearance/behavior have been carried out in order to clarify the mechanism of the abnormal fracture occurrence and to ensure the prevention of long brittle fracture propagation for pipelines.In this study, a compressive pre-straining at the impact hammer side in the DWTT specimen was evaluated under quasi-static load conditions. The specimen’s surfaces were electrolytically-etched to print circle patterns with 5 mm in diameter in order to measure plastic strain. Charpy impact specimens were taken from the quasi-static loaded and unloaded DWTT specimen to measure the possible influence of pre-straining on toughness. The impact test results show that more than 2 % of the compressive pre-strain gave 7 to 10 % decrease of the Charpy upper-shelf energy. The effect of pre-straining on tensile property was also evaluated. These present experiments indicate that the occurrence of abnormal fracture near the hammer side can be attributed to the compressive pre-straining. Furthermore, the chevron-notched and the pre-cracked DWTTs and the partial gas burst test were conducted in order to compare the brittle-to-ductile transition temperature. Based on these experiments, the effect of notch configuration on the brittle-to-ductile transition temperature and the correlation between DWTTs and pipe test were discussed. In addition, the relationship between the pre-straining and the abnormal fracture appearance was considered