Jw. Hancock et A. Nekkal, THE APPLICATION OF CONSTRAINT-BASED FRACTURE-MECHANICS TO ENGINEERINGSTRUCTURES, Nuclear Engineering and Design, 184(1), 1998, pp. 77-88
Elastic-plastic crack tip fields can be characterised by two parameter
s, J and T/Q which describes crack tip constraint. This forms the foun
dation of a constraint based fracture mechanics in which toughness is
expressed as a function of constraint in the form of a J-(T/Q) locus.
The enhanced toughness associated with shallow cracks and defects can
be used in a systematic manner by constraint matching, and implemented
through a simple modification to a failure assessment diagram. This m
ethodology enables the conservatism associated with the use of deeply
cracked fracture toughness measurements to be relaxed. In this work th
ese methods have been applied to a tubular welded joint. (C) 1998 Else
vier Science S.A. All rights reserved.