An application of the J-Q model for estimating cleavage stress in the brittle-to-ductile transition

A recent model was proposed by the authors to predict cleavage failure for steels based on a weak link mechanism and a crack tip stress field modified for planar constraint by the J – Q theory. The model uses the distribution of toughness results at a single temperature to predict a toughness distribution at a different temperature and/or geometry. In this model a material cleavage stress is needed to predict when the weak link fracture is triggered. This cleavage stress is a key input for the application of the model but it is not a property that is routinely measured and it is hence not available for most steel alloys. In this paper, a method to estimate the average value of the cleavage stress is presented, based on a characteristic of the model to predict cleavage failure. Examples of cleavage stress are given for several steels and these results are used to predict the toughness distributions for structural component models.