Development of an improved prediction method for the yield strength of steel alloys in the Small Punch Test

The Small Punch Test (SPT) is a miniaturized test to characterize the mechanical properties of the materials. The load-displacement curve obtained by this test does not directly provide the material parameters, and linear correlations between data obtained from SPT curve and each mechanical property are necessary. The main difficulty of these correlation methods is the high level of scattering showed when analyzing a wide set of materials in the same study. In this paper, a finite element analysis focused on steel alloys was performed to understand the specimen behavior in the early stages of the SPT. Present methods to correlate the material yield strength with the data obtained from the SPT curve were also analyzed via this FEM study to discover the meaning of the current correlation scattering for this mechanical property. This numerical research also proved the accuracy of the proposed correlation method for the yield strength via the SPT. The maximum slope of zone I (Slope(ini)) of the SPT curve showed an accurate correlation with this mechanical property. Focusing on steel alloys, experimental tensile tests and SPT's were performed to validate the numerical analysis and to demonstrate the suitability of the proposed Slope(ini) versus yield strength correlation method. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.