Effect of notch depth and radius on the critical fracture load of bainitic functionally graded steels under mixed mode I + II loading

Functionally graded steels are produced from austenitic stainless steel and carbon steel by controlling the chemical distribution of chromium, nickel and carbon atoms at the remelting stage through electroslag remelting process. In the present paper, the strain-energy density criterion is employed to assess the critical load of rounded V-notched components made of functionally graded bainitic steel. A crack arrester configuration under mixed mode loading is considered. The flow (yield/ultimate) strength and fracture toughness are assumed to vary exponentially along the notch depth direction while the Young’s modulus and the Poisson’s ratio are assumed to be constant. The control volume, which is a reminiscent of Neuber’s elementary structural volume, depends on the ultimate tensile strength σut and the fracture toughness KIC in the case of brittle or quasi-brittle materials subjected to static loadings. Since, σut and KIC are not constant along the notch depth, the control volume which can be obtained numerically as a function of the variation of these material properties through the specimen width. Different values of the notch root radius (from 0.2 to 2.0 mm) and notch depth (from 5 to 7 mm) are considered. The assessed critical fracture loads are in sound agreement with the experimental results.