Development of Prometey local approach and analysis of physical and mechanical aspects of brittle fracture of RPV steels

In the present paper, the probabilistic model for brittle fracture toughness prediction proposed by the authors earlier and known as the Prometey model, is formulated with two stochastic parameters-the critical stress for microcrack nucleation sigma(d) and the critical stress for microcrack propagation SC The stochastic dependence of the critical stress for microcrack propagation Sc is experimentally studied for an RPV steel. The Prometey model with two stochastic parameters is applied to model the effect of irradiation on the fracture toughness transition curve and to predict the loss of constraint associated with shallow cracks. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.