Local approach concepts and the microstructures of steels

The paper describes cleavage fracture models that relate local fracture stresses and fracture toughness values to the sizes of brittle initiating particles. In a "quasi-homogeneous" steel, i.e. one possessing a smooth distribution of small particle sizes, a "typically coarse" particle is present in every sample tested and the failure stress or fracture toughness is single valued. When random experimental errors are included, the single valued function becomes a Gaussian distribution. Spatially heterogeneous microstructures produce quite different distributions and these are discussed with respect to extrapolations to low failure probabilities. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.