Welding is one of the most common methods in industrial practice for joining components. Its main advantages are high speed in manufacturing combined with low costs and, usually, a high degree of flexibility, integrity and reliability. Nevertheless, welding is a highly complex metallurgical process and, therefore, weldments are susceptible to material discontinuities, flaws and residual stresses which may lead to structural failure and life time reduction. As a consequence weldments are an important field of fracture mechanics methods although its application is more complex than for homogeneous or non-welded structures. The aim of the paper is to provide an overview on the current state of fracture mechanics application to weldments. It starts by discussing the specific features which any fracture mechanics analysis of weldments has to take into account. Then, the experimental determination of fracture toughness, fatigue crack propagation and tensile properties of weldments is addressed. Finally, the analytical determination of the crack driving force in components and structural integrity assessment approaches for weldments are presented.
Modern structural integrity assessment procedures in the field of nuclear related technology incorporate fracture
mechanical concepts. Therefore, they inevitably require the availability of both, loading parameters as well as material
characteristics in terms of fracture mechanical quantities. Especially in case of dynamic loading conditions, the methods
for the determination of the loading parameters need further improvement and there is a lack of material characteristics
as well. In Germany, ductile cast iron (DCI) is used for heavy-sectioned casks for radioactive materials. New developments
in cask design and efforts to extend the application limits require further investigations. The present study is part
of an ongoing fracture mechanics research programme of BAM which is focused on the systematic mechanical and
fracture mechanical material characterisation of DCI materials under dynamic loading conditions. In this study, results
of fracture mechanics investigations on ductile cast iron from an original DCI container with a wide variety of microstructure
under dynamic loading conditions in the temperature range from -50 °C to +22 °C are presented. Large scale
as well as small scale single edge crack bend specimens SE(B) with thicknesses of 140 mm and 15 mm, respectively
were tested. Furthermore, it is reported on the results of a finite element simulation of the dynamic large scale fracture
mechanics tests. Strength and deformation characteristics were determined in dynamic tensile tests. They are discussed
with respect to the influence of pearlite content and test temperature. The material specific experimental difficulties in
the determination of reliable dynamic crack initiation toughness values of DCI are outlined.