Abstract
A MODEL has been proposed1 that relates the cleavage fracture toughness of a mild steel to its yield and fracture stresses through a microstructurally determined characteristic distance. This model quantitatively predicted the experimentally observed temperature dependence of the cleavage toughness in mild steels, and its applicability to low alloy steels has since been demonstrated2. In this study, an analytical crack tip stress distribution is combined with this model to provide an expression for the fracture toughness in terms of the microstructurally determined properties. Simply expressed grain size dependences of the yield and fracture stresses are used to predict the grain size dependence of the cleavage fracture toughness of mild steel—it is predicted that the toughness passes through a maximum at grain sizes in the region of 5 µm and that further grain refinement leads to reduced toughness.
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CURRY, D. Grain-size dependence of cleavage fracture toughness in mild steel. Nature 276, 50–51 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1038/276050a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/276050a0
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