A model to predict the fracture distance of cleavage fracture as a function of temperature

We propose a model which computes the fracture distance of materials (reactor pressure vessel steel, C–Mn steel, and four heat-treated HSLA steels) as a function of temperature. The fracture distance, an important length scale for predicting cleavage fracture, is determined using the parameters such as mean grain size, fracture toughness and yield stress of the material in the range of −250 to 0 °C. The fracture distances computed from the proposed model agreed with measurements for the materials. Some differences between the predictions and the measurements were observed for HSLA steel with fine grain size (30 μm) and coarse grain size (55 μm).