j ournal of materi als processi ng technology 2 0 1 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 419424

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Effects of notch position of the Charpy impact specimen
on the failure behavior in heat affected zone
Y.C. Jang
a
, J.K. Hong
b
, J.H. Park
b
, D.W. Kim
a
, Y. Lee
a,
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 156-756, Republic of Korea
b
Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, Changwon, Kyungnam 641-101, Republic of Korea
a r t i c l e i n f o
Keywords:
Notch position
Charpy impact test
Energy absorption
Failure simulation
a b s t r a c t
Experimental and numerical studies were performed to examine the effects of notch posi-
tion on the failure behavior and energy absorption when the Charpy V-notch impact test is
made at 1

C. Carbon steel plate (SA-516 Gr. 70) with thickness of 25mm usually used for
pressure vessel was welded by Shielded Metal-Arc Welding method and specimens were
fabricated from the welded plate. The Charpy impact tests were then performed with speci-
mens having different notch positions varying within HAZ. Aseries of 3-DFE analysis which
simulates the Charpy test are carried out as well. The FE analysis takes into account the het-
erogeneous mechanical properties in HAZ. Results reveal that the absorbed energies during
impact test depend signicantly on the notch position. Experimentally measured energy is
in agreement with computed one when the notch is positioned by 1.5mm from the fusion
line.
2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The Charpy V-notch test is a standardized high strain-rate
test which can measure the amount of energy absorption of
material. This test was rst proposed more than a century
ago (Russel, 1898; Charpy, 1901). This absorbed energy is a
measure of a given materials toughness and acts as a tool to
study brittle-ductile transition, depending upon the test tem-
perature. With this test, one can evaluate reliability of weld
joint component and/or structure based on measured energy
absorption of material (specimen) and understanding defor-
mation and failure process during test.
The specimen is composed of three parts, weld, heat
affected zone (HAZ) and base material. These have different
mechanical properties. Consequently it causes stress mis-
match between them. Hence, stress eld at the ahead of
notch is signicantly dependent upon the position of V-
notch along weld, HAZ and base material and subsequently

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ysl@cau.ac.kr (Y. Lee).
the energy that the specimen absorb during impact test is
different.
In this light, Hong et al. (2007) performed the Charpy V-
notchtest withnotchpositionvaried withinHAZ and reported
the absorbed energy is inuenced by notch position relative
to various microstructures and is reduced as notch position
closes to base material. Moltubakk et al. (1999) studied the
inuence of notch positioning on the fracture behavior exper-
imentally with 3-point bending test and calculated Weibull
stress distribution in HAZ with 2-D FE analysis.
Tvergaard and Needleman (1988) performed FE analysis
to investigate brittle-to-ductile failure transition for differ-
ent weld joint under condition of plane strain deformation.
They studied failure behavior of weld, HAZ and base material
(HY100) while moving the notch position in the weld. They
reported energy for crack propagation is very sensitive to the
relative location of notch in the weld and brittle failure might
occur as notchcloses to HAZ. TvergaardandNeedleman(1986)
0924-0136/$ see front matter 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2007.11.272
420 j ournal of materi als processi ng technology 2 0 1 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 419424
also examined the effect of rate sensitivity onthe failure mode
with2-DFE analysis. Eberle et al. (2000) carriedout 2-DFE anal-
ysis of the Charpy V-notch specimen to calculate J
R
-curve for
German standard steel StE 460. The computed J
R
-curve was
then compared with experimentally measured one.
For homogeneous material, full three-dimensional FE anal-
ysis of the Charpy V-notch test was presented rst time by
Mathur and Needleman (1994). Tvergaard and Needleman
(2004) presented full three-dimensional FE analysis to inves-
tigate the sensitivity to where the notch across the HAZ layer
and comparison made with test specimen where the notch is
cut on the face parallel to the surface of the test piece.
Many studies presented so far have performed FE analy-
sis with assuming that HAZ is of homogeneous mechanical
properties. However, HAZ has various microstructures and
consequently different mechanical properties. In addition,
reproducibility of the Charpy V-notch test for the study of
notch position has been always problematic because test
results usually exhibits a large scatter. Note it is almost impos-
sible to control alignment of the notch position in micrometer
scale during test. Hence, a full 3-D FE analysis which can sim-
ulate quantitatively the effect of non-uniform distribution of
mechanical properties in HAZ on energy absorption is highly
desirable.
In this study, we divided HAZ into three regions based on
experimentally measured Vickers hardness and distributed
the mechanical properties in HAZ and the notch is positioned
in the three regions accordingly. Aseries of three-dimensional
FE analysis is then carried out to capture the effect of not
position. Computed absorbed energy is compared with exper-
imentally measured one and issue on the location of notch in
the Charpy V-notch test specimen is discussed. The material
used in this study is SA-516 Gr.70.
2. The Charpy test, welding condition and
specimen
2.1. The Charpy test
The Charpy test was performed according to standard test
methods for notch bar impact testing of metallic materials
(ASTME 23-02). The total length of the specimen is 55mmand
the rectangular cross-section area is 10mm10mm. Speci-
men has a V-shaped notch with a ank angle of 45

and depth
of 2mm. The tipradius of notchis 0.25mm. The radius of strik-
ing edge is 8mm. Before test, specimenis positioned upontwo
anvils with a span of 40mm.
2.2. Welding condition
The SA-516, carbon steel plate (C: 0.18%, Si: 0.3%, Mn: 1.15%,
P: 0.014%, S: 0.03%, Cu: 0.17%, Ni: 0.31%, Cr: 0.02%, Mo: 0.098%,
V: 0.026%, Nb: 0.016%) generally used for pressure vessel, was
chosen for this study. The chemical compositions of SA-516
Gr. 70 steel is given in Table 1. The material has yield strength
of 360MPa, ultimate strength of 540MPa and an elongation of
34%.
The welded joint with thickness of 25mm plate is
fabricated with Shielded Metal-Arc Welding (SMAW)
Table 1 Yield stress and ultimate tensile strength
assigned to nite elements analysis
Weld W-HAZ C-HAZ B-HAZ Base material

y
(MPa) 480 630 500 400 360

u
(MPa) 720 940 740 620 535
Fig. 1 Schematic of cross-section of welded plate.
method. The welding condition of the specimen is
as follows: current =110170A, voltage=3035V, travel
speed=1215cm/min and inter-pass temperature=54

C.
Maximum heat input was 1617kJ/cm and a half-K weld
groove instead of V groove was used to distribute material
properties in HAZ to thickness direction of welded plate.
2.3. Specimen
Once welding and subsequent cooling is nished, specimens
(marked in dashed line) are then sampled as shown in Fig. 1.
The specimens marked in dashed line as rectangular shape is
paralleling to the surface of welded plate and is taken at the
location of 1/4 t (t is the thickness of welded plate).
The specimens are prepared such that the notch is located
at different positions. To study the effect of notch position in
HAZonthe absorbedenergy, we have three types of specimens
having different notchpositions inHAZ(Fig. 2). Inother words,
the location of notch varies within HAZ.
3. Numerical simulation
3.1. Finite element analysis
Three-dimensional nite element analysis was conducted
using ABAQUS, a commercial FEA code (Version 6.6-1). An half
of the specimenwas analyzed due to geometrical symmetry of
the specimen and loading condition. The three-dimensional
mesh of specimen is shown in Fig. 3. Since we focus on the
variation of absorbed energy of specimen, signicant mesh
renement is given around the area that considerable plastic
owoccurs. Element type for the specimens is C3D8R, but ele-
ment type for transition mesh region is C3D4. The number of
elements used is 39,000. The edge length of smallest element
at the notch root is 250m.
For arbitrary crack growth simulation, Needleman (1987)
adopted a cohesive force model in which the fracture charac-
teristics of the material are embedded in a cohesive surface
traction-displacement separation relation for all elements in
the material. But obtaining the material parameters character-
izing the cohesive surface separationlawis quite complicated.
Crackgrowthsimulationwas alsoperformedusing anelement
j ournal of materi als processi ng technology 2 0 1 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 419424 421
Fig. 2 Specimens with different notch positions in HAZ. NT-1, NT-2 and NT-3 indicate that notch is located 0.5, 1.0 and
1.5mm from fusion line.
Fig. 3 Representative nite element mesh of the Charpy
test specimen.
removing method (Tvergaard, 1982) which requires informa-
tion on a prescribed stress or strain around the crack tip to
evaluate whether or not the crack will grow further. When
the crack tip passes a material point occupied by an element
ahead of the initial crack tip, the element is assumed to van-
ish, which is realized by reducing the magnitude of the nodal
forces to be proportional to the fraction of the length that the
crack tip has traversed in the failed element. In this study,
we use the element removing method for simulating crack
propagation. During the removing step, no additional load
increments are applied, and no other elements vanish. This
guarantees that the reduction of internal force to zero has no
effect onthe computedcrackpath. The striking edge has initial
velocity of 6m/s.
3.2. Hardness variation in the HAZ
Generally, the grains on the heat affected zone adjacent to
the fusion line are more coarsening compared with those of
other areas, and therefore they have lower toughness values
(Taillard et al., 1995; Devillers et al., 1993). However, accord-
ing to several surveillance test reports (Hong, 1997), toughness
of the HAZ was reported to be higher than that of base
material. This implies the mechanical properties might be
dependent of welding condition and chemical components of
material. Therefore, we must measure the mechanical prop-
erties directly through performing a series of tensile test (or
compressive test if necessary), but we cannot perform the
test for HAZ since we are in trouble in making specimen
suitable for the test. Note that width of HAZ is so narrow
that one cannot make specimen for tensile test. For the rea-
son, we rely on an alternative which yields the mechanical
property.
The alternative is that we rst measure the hardness of
base material, HAZ and weld and then calculate yield strength
of themfromthe measured hardness. The hardness measured
across base material, HAZ and weld is shown in Fig. 4. This
hardness conguration points out the mechanical properties
in HAZ is quite heterogeneous. A correlation between Vickers
hardness, H
v
and yield strength,
y
used in this study is in the
followings.
H
v
= C
y
(1)
Fig. 4 Measured Vickers hardness at weld, HAZ and base material.
422 j ournal of materi als processi ng technology 2 0 1 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 419424
Fig. 5 HAZ is divided into three regions for nite element analysis. Two cases are considered. W-HAZ is a region adjacent
to the weld fusion line, C-HAZ is a center region of HAZ and B-HAZ is a region adjacent to the base material.
C is proportionality constant. Rationale for this relation is as
follows. It has been found that the measured hardness of
base material is equal to the measured yield strength of base
material multiplied by a constant 3. Ultimate tensile stress,
u
necessary for failure simulation, is also assigned accordingly
with referring to Kim and Yoon (1998). Mechanical properties
employed in the study are summarized in Table 1.
As strain rates of material increase, its yield strength
increases as well. For many common metals this effect starts
to play a role in the deformation behavior and crack propaga-
tion. This study applies yield stress ratio, /
0
. is ow stress
and
0
is static yield stress. In mild steel, yield stress ratio is
in the range 2.02.8 (Folch and Burdekin, 1999). In this study,
yield stress was assumed 2.0.
3.3. Notch position
To investigate the effect of inhomogeneous distribution of
mechanical properties inHAZonthe crackpropagationbehav-
ior and absorbed energy of specimen during test, HAZ with
width of 2mm is divided into three regions which have dif-
ferent mechanical properties as shown in Fig. 5. The width of
each region (W-HAZ, C-HAZ and B-HAZ) is different.
Two cases are considered according to different width of
each region. In Case I, the width of W-HAZ is 1.0mm and
C-HAZ and that of B-HAZ is 0.5mm, respectively. In Case II,
the width of W-HAZ and C-HAZ is 0.5mm, respectively and
that of B-HAZ is 1.0mm. Notch position for each case is des-
ignated as NT-1, NT-2 and NT-3, corresponding to the notch
positions in Fig. 5. Yield stresses calculated by using Eq. (1)
and ultimate tensile stresses are assigned to the elements
belonging to the regions (W-HAZ, C-HAZ and B-HAZ) desig-
nated above. If equivalent plastic strain at an element reaches
Fig. 6 Energy absorption experimentally measured is
compared with computed one in terms of notch positions
(NT-1, NT-2 and NT-3) at HAZ (see Fig. 5).
a prescribed failure strain, ductile damage initiation criterion
(DUCTCRT) is triggered at an element and then the magnitude
of the elemental nodal forces is reduced to be proportional
to the fraction of the length that the notch tip has traversed
in the failed element. The failure strain of the each mate-
rial are assumed as follows; base material =0.3, W-HAZ=0.26,
C-HAZ=0.27, B-HAZ=0.29 and weld=0.28.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Energy absorbed during impact
Fig. 6 compares experimentally measured absorbed energy
with computed one in terms of the notch position (NT-1, NT-2
andNT-3) at HAZ. Whenthe notchis adjacent tothe fusionline
(i.e., NT-1), the energy absorption measured is larger than cal-
culated one. This indicates the ultimate tensile strength and
yield stress of specimen adjacent to the fusion line is higher
than those set to nite element model. Especially, much larger
difference is observed in Case I, in comparison with Case II.
The difference of the absorbed energy between the NT-1 of
Case I and NT-1 of Case II is approximately 60J.
But the difference reduces when notch is located at NT-2.
In the NT-3 of Cases I and II, the energy absorption measured
is similar to calculated one. In NT-1 of Case I, crack passes
through W-HAZ (which has higher
u
and
y
) but, in Case II, it
does not pass through W-HAZ. The crack of the NT-3 of Cases
I and II, passes through base material as well. This result indi-
cates the difference of the absorbed energy depends on crack
growth path as well. A detail explanation for this is given in
the following section. For Cases I and II, a good agreement is
noted when notch is located at NT-3. These results imply that
the notch might be located near the base material when we
makes specimen for the Charpy impact test.
4.2. Crack propagation
Fig. 7 illustrates the contour of ductile damage initiationof ele-
ments being deformed and three stages for crack propagation
in deformed state. If DUCTCRT is 1.0, the element is about
to be failed and then crack starts propagating. If DUCTCRT
is zero, the elements do not reach the prescribed failure
strain as yet. It illustrates 2-D conguration of crack propa-
gation for Case I. If whole HAZ is assigned as homogeneous
j ournal of materi als processi ng technology 2 0 1 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 419424 423
Fig. 7 Contour of ductile damage initiation criterion and equivalent plastic strain. NT-1, NT-2 and NT-3 specify that C
L
(center line) of notch is located at 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5mm from fusion line (see Fig. 5).
mechanical properties, crack propagation direction is straight.
However, when inhomogeneous mechanical properties are
assigned, the direction of crack propagation is not straight any
more.
Fig. 7(a) shows when notch is located between W-
HAZ and C-HAZ (i.e., NT-1 in Case I), the crack passes
through C-HAZ region and propagates toward the B-HAZ
region and base material. Fig. 7(b) (i.e., NT-2 in Case I)
and Fig. 7(c) (i.e., NT-3 in Case I) also show that the crack
progresses toward the B-HAZ and base material. However,
the amount of crack growth direction turned toward the
B-HAZ region and base material is different, as can be
shown.
Fig. 7(d) illustrates the direction of maximum stress tri-
axiality (negative pressure stress/von Mises stress) and the
equivalent plastic straindistributionat the notch. Whenstress
triaxiality is large, failure starts easily. At notch tip, the stress
triaxialilty of element to impact direction is the maximum.
Regardless of homogeneous material and inhomogeneous
material, the maximum stress triaxiality is toward impact
direction. However, the crack growth direction is strongly
dependent of the distribution of equivalent plastic strain. This
is because B-HAZ and C-HAZ region has lower
u
(UTS) and
y
(yield stress) than W-HAZ. Initially the crack does not go along
the impact direction but its propagation direction becomes
coincident with the impact direction after the crack tip meets
the base material.
5. Concluding remarks
Experimental and numerical studies have been made in
the present work to examine the effect of inhomogeneous
mechanical properties in HAZ on energy absorption. Notch
positioninHAZwas dividedinto three sub-regions whichhave
different mechanical properties. Vickers hardness test on the
specimenalso shows the mechanical properties vary to a great
extend. The results of 3-D FE analysis showed the energy that
specimen absorbed during impact test is strongly dependent
of the relative notch position in HAZ. The energy absorption
experimentally measured is in agreement with computed one
when the notch of the specimen is displaced by 1.5mm from
the fusion line.
Acknowledgement
Y. Lee wishes to acknowledge the nancial support from the
Korean Science and Engineering Foundation (R01-2006-000-
10358-0 (2006)).
424 j ournal of materi als processi ng technology 2 0 1 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 419424
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