Crack tip opening displacement and angle for a growing crack in carbon steel

The crack tip opening displacements and angles (CTOD/CTOA) are calculated with finite element method based on the test data of a set of constraint-dependent J-R curves for A285 carbon steel. The values of the CTOD/CTOA are initially high at initiation, but rapidly decrease to a nearly constant value. When the common practice is adopted by using only the constant part of CTOD/CTOA as the fracture criterion, the crack growth behavior is shown to be severely underestimated. However, with a bilinear form of CTOD/CTCA fracture criterion which approximates the initial non-constant portion, the experimental load vs. crack extension curves can be closely predicted. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the CTOD/CTOA is crack tip constraint dependent. The values of CTCD/CTOA for specimens with various ratios of crack length to specimen width (a/W) are reflected by the J-R curves and their slopes.