A study concerning material fracture toughness and some small punch test data for low alloy steels

The present study has demonstrated the existence of a significant relationship between the small punch energy and the biaxial strain at the point of failure. Furthermore, using published trends relating biaxial fracture strain and fracture material toughness, relationships concerning fracture toughness and small punch energy values were generated. It was shown that the predictions from certain such relationships exhibited good commonality with published real fracture toughness data. Furthermore, one study which related fracture toughness to non-metallic inclusion distribution was promising while other models based upon microstructural details and small scale fracture roughness factors were less successful. This study must be considered provisional in nature since it represents a first attempt at relating small punch data with material fracture toughness, and as such, contains a few assumptions which are somewhat tentative.