TWI Knowledge Summary

1 The principles of fracture mechanics-based

fitness-for-purpose assessments of structures or
components containing flaws

It is now well accepted that all welded structures contain flaws, and that these do not
necessarily affect structural integrity or service performance. This is implicitly
recognised by most welding fabrication codes which specify weld flaw tolerance
levels based on experience and workmanship practice. However, these flaw
acceptance levels cannot provide quantitative measures of structural integrity, for
instance how 'close' a particular structure containing weld flaws is to the failure
condition. In addition, flaws can develop during service due to e.g. corrosion and
fatigue and the tolerance of the component regarding these needs to be known.

The fracture mechanics based fitness-for-purpose approach enables the significance

of flaws to be assessed in terms of structural integrity. It can be used to demonstrate
that a given flaw can be left as it is and so avoid unnecessary repairs. Because of its
tremendous economic potential, the fitness-for-purpose concept has undergone rapid
developments in the past 20 years and so an internationally-recognised and widely
used procedure has been developed in the UK, published as the British Standards
Institution Guide BS 7910: 2005 [1] .

2 Approach
When applying the fitness-for-purpose approach, all potential failure modes should
be identified and an assessment conducted to ensure that the conditions for failure
are not reached during the design life of the structure. Typical failure modes to be
considered include:

Fracture
Fatigue
Gross yielding or plastic collapse
Leakage
Corrosion and erosion
Stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue
Buckling
Creep and creep/fatigue

Often, a combination of failure modes needs to be considered. For example, a

fabrication flaw may initially grow by fatigue to a size where fracture, gross yielding or
leakage can occur. In the following, only the failure modes of fracture, gross yielding
and fatigue will be considered. An important requirement for any structural
assessment is the need to define the size of the flaw present.
3 Fracture Assessment
Fracture is a failure mechanism that involves the stable or unstable propagation of a
crack within a structure. In ferritic steels, the overall fracture behaviour will depend
strongly on temperature. At low temperatures, brittle fracture prevails for which, once
the crack has started to extend, crack propagation may occur extremely rapidly. At
high temperatures and for materials such as austenitic stainless steels, the fracture
behaviour is ductile and crack growth takes place by a stable tearing mechanism.

Whatever the mechanism, for fracture or crack growth to occur, a detrimental

combination of applied stress, crack dimension and the material's fracture toughness
is required, see Fig.1. This condition can be expressed mathematically as:

K I K mat

4 Fig.1. Factors controlling fracture

i.e. if the crack driving force (expressed as the applied stress intensity factor, K I) is
greater or equal than the brittle or ductile fracture toughness, K mat, fracture will
occur. The stress intensity factor characterises the stress field at the crack tip, and it
is the conditions at the crack tip which govern the general behaviour of a cracked
structure.

The applied stress intensity factor, K I, is calculated using relations involving the
geometry of the component, the magnitude of the applied stresses and the crack
dimensions. For elastic-plastic conditions, the strain hardening behaviour of the
material in question is also important. The stress analysis should consider stress
concentrations, including those which may arise from deviations from the intended
design, such as misalignment; and welded residual stresses (of up to yield strength
magnitude) must be taken into account.

K mat is measured using pre-cracked specimens taken from the material which
represent the region in which the subject crack is located. For example, if the subject
crack is located in weld metal, the fracture toughness specimen will be notched and
fatigue pre-cracked into a test weld representing the structural weld. The test
procedures are described in national and international standards [2,3] . Fracture
toughness values are sensitive to material microstructure, heat treatment condition,
loading rate and test temperature (particularly in ferritic steels) and, in certain
circumstances, specimen thickness.

In most structural materials, plasticity effects precede failure, and, in the limit, gross
yielding effects predominate and failure occurs by plastic collapse. To account for the
range of possible behaviours, i.e. elastic fracture, plasticity effects through to plastic
collapse, a two-parameter approach to failure has been developed. This is expressed
in the form of a failure assessment diagram (FAD), see Fig.2.

5 Fig.2. Failure analysis

diagram (FAD) as used in BS7910

In this diagram, the proximity to fracture is given on the vertical axis as the ratio of
applied stress intensity, K I, to fracture toughness, K mat:

K r = K I/K mat

If K r = 1, failure is predicted to occur by brittle fracture.

The proximity to plastic collapse is given by the ratio of the applied reference stress,
ref, to the yield strength Y.

Lr= ref/ Y

If L r = L r max (see various cut-offs in Fig.2.) failure is predicted to occur by plastic

collapse.

A failure locus provides the connection between K r and L r and any assessment
point falling on or below the failure locus means that the flaw is stable and does not
present a significant risk of failure. Assessment points above the failure locus
represent unacceptable flaws which may cause failure.

For materials which fracture in an elastic-plastic fashion, alternative fracture

toughness parameters have been proposed, namely J and the crack tip opening
displacement CTOD. CTOD testing and assessment procedures are extensively
used in the offshore construction and pipeline industries, whilst J testing procedures
are more common in the power generating industries. For cases where these
parameters describe fracture, K I and K Ic are replaced by J or CTOD using suitable
relations. However, the principle of the assessment procedure remains the same.

6 Fatigue Assessment
Fatigue is a failure mechanism that involves the stable propagation of a crack under
repeated or cyclic loading. Each load cycle causes a very small, but finite amount of
crack extension. The crack therefore extends steadily until a final failure mode such
as fracture or gross yield intervenes.

The basis for all fatigue assessment is the assumption that the increment of crack
extension, da, per cycle, dN, is a function of the applied stress intensity factor range,
K I:

da/dN = A KIm

K I is calculated in the same manner as the applied stress intensity factor, K I for
fracture assessments with the exception that the applied stress ranges rather than
the applied stresses are used.

Although the constants in - A and m - are material dependent, extensive

experimental work has shown that for steels and aluminium alloys, they have similar
values for a wide range of steel yield strengths and microstructures for a given
environment. Thus, for steel, fatigue behaviour can be assumed to be independent of
microstructure. Experiments have also shown that below a threshold stress intensity
factor, no fatigue crack growth occurs in steels (see BS 7910 [1]).

The above equation can be invoked to calculate the number of cycles N

corresponding to the growth from an initial to a final size, to estimate fatigue life.

The initial flaw size often represents the height of a flaw found by non-destructive
testing, and the final flaw size is set by the limiting failure condition, such as through
wall cracking, leakage or the maximum tolerable size calculated using the fracture
assessment procedure described in the previous section. For an assessment based
on the failure analysis diagram ( Fig.2), the final crack size would correspond to a
point on the failure locus.

7 Conclusions
There now exist fully documented and accepted procedures for assessing weld flaws
using fitness-for-purpose principles. Application of these procedures offer extensive
scope for significant cost saving in design and fabrication; during inspection and
operation; and at the end of the design life of welded structures with quantifiably
ensured structural integrity.

8 References
 1. BS 7910:2005: 'Guide to methods for assessing the acceptability of flaws in
metallic structures'. London; British Standards Institution, 2005.

2. BS 7448: 'Fracture mechanics toughness tests: Part 1 : 1991. Method for

determination of K Ic, critical CTOD and critical J values of metallic materials'.
London; British Standards Institution, 1991.

3. ASTM 1820-99, Standard Test Method for Measurement of Fracture

Toughness. American Society of Testing and Materials, Philadelphia, PA,
1999.

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