Fracture Toughness Analysis of the China RPV Steel with Miniaturized Specimen

Reactor pressurized vessel (RPV), which determines the lifetime of the nuclear power plant (NPP), is mainly forged using A508-3 steel in China. In order to meet the requirement of the small specimen test technique in the nuclear application, the fracture toughness of A508-3 steel was tested under-100°C using 1/4 CT specimens, and analyzed using Master Curve according to ASTM E 1921. In this work, the relationship of the KIC and the distance between the cleavage crack initiation site and the front of the fatigue crack is studied, and the transition temperature T0 of A508-3 is-98.7 oC, which is quite close to the test temperature.