Evaluation of brittle crack arrest toughness for highly-irradiated reactor pressure vessel steels

Iwata, Keiko ; Hata, Kuniki ; Tobita, Toru; Hirota, Takatoshi*; Takamizawa, Hisashi ; Chimi, Yasuhiro; Nishiyama, Yutaka 

The crack arrest fracture toughness, K, values for highly-irradiated reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steels are estimated according to a linear relationship between crack arrest toughness reference temperature, T, and the temperature corresponding to a fixed arrest load, equal to 4 kN, T, obtained by instrumented Charpy impact test. The relationship between T derived from the instrumented Chrapy impact test and fracture toughness reference temperature, T, was expressed as an equation proposed in a previous report. The coefficients in the equation could be fine-tuned to obtain a better fitting curve using the present experimental data and previous K data. The K curve for RPV;A533B class1 steels irradiated up to 1.310 n/cm (E 1 MeV) was compared with a K curve defined in JEAC4206-2016. It was shown that the K curve was always lower than the 1%ile curve of K for these irradiated RPV steels. This result indicates that the conservativeness of the method defined in JEAC4206-2016 to evaluate K using K curve is confirmed for highly-irradiated RPV steels.