Experiments to separate the effect of texture on anisotropy of pipeline steel

Many linepipe steels exhibit a variation in mechanical properties as a function of the orientation of the test sample relative to the rolling and transverse directions of the steel plate. Such anisotropy limits the optimum design and exploitation of the steel, and its occurrence has been attributed to effects such as microstructural banding and the associated delamination during fracture, and unfavourably oriented ferrite cleavage planes. It is often difficult to separate the factors, but an experiment has been designed and implemented to study the role of crystallographic texture in isolation. It is demonstrated that the texture plays a major role in influencing the anisotropy of the Charpy test energy.