TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 106/1979
By G O Johnston
Background
In a probabilistic fracture mechanics assessment of the risk of failure of a structure, one of the: key inputs is the distribution of the toughness of the material used in fabrication. Few data exist at one set of conditions, so a number of Charpy V notch and crack opening displacement tests were carried out in order to enable a statistical interpretation of the results to be made. A preliminary analysis was performed to give the best fitting normal, log-normal or Weibull distribution for each set of conditions. Other distributions may of course be more exact. Future work will include a more comprehensive analysis. The results to date varied widely depending on the temperature of the test and the toughness parameter measured.