Issue 30

P. Lopez-Crespo et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 30 (2014) 244-251; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.30.31 245 M ATERIAL AND SPECIMEN low carbon steel (St-52-3N) was examined in this investigation. This material is often employed in structural components. The composition of the steel is shown in Tab. 1. Fig. 1 shows a micrograph of the St-52-3N steel. Ferrite and pearlite bands can be seen in Fig. 1 as vertical bands in white and black respectively. C Si Mn P S Cr Ni Mo 0.17 0.225 1.235 0.010 0.0006 0.072 0.058 0.16 Table 1 : Chemical composition in weight % of St-52-3N steel. The balance is Fe. Figure 1 : Optical micrograph of St-52-3N steel used in all tests. Tubular hollow specimens were used in this work to apply different combinations of torsion and tensile loads. A schematic of the geometry is shown in Fig. 2. All experiments were conducted with MTS 809 servo-hydraulic loading rig, allowing different biaxial loads to be applied on the specimens. Biaxial extensometer Epsilon 3550 was used to measure axial and angular strains. All the crack measurements were made with a black and white 1.2 megapixel digital camera coupled to a long distance microscope. Co-axial illumination was used to acquire all images. Moreover, two additional LED 3 W lamps were also used to improve light distribution on the surface and remove reflections. Fig. 3 shows the setup employed in the experiment with all the different elements used. Figure 2 : Geometry of the dog-bone shaped tubular hollow specimen used in the experiments. All dimensions are in mm. A