Ductile-To-Brittle transition modeling for ferritic steels used in the nuclear industry has been studied for years. This paper proposes a two-step coupled modeling representing ductile crack growth thanks to a gradient-enhanced GTN model and applying a modified Beremin model to evaluate the probability of failure of CT specimens at -50°C.
Both models have been calibrated separately at temperatures where there is no coupling. Beremin model is first studied at low temperature. It is shown that the model could be applied to different geometries. GTN model is then calibtrated at -20°C. The identified GTN model could be transferred to lower temperatures. Finally the coupling is studied.This work emphasizes the necessity of a special treatment of the stress field resulting from the GTN model to compute the Weibull stress and the use of a modified Beremin model accounting for the void volume fraction.
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