Results and Conclusions from Fracture Toughness Tests in IAEA CRP-5

This paper provides a summary of Master Curve fracture toughness test results on small surveillance-type single- edge bend (SE(B)) and one-inch thick compact tension (1T-CT) specimens of the IAEA reference reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steel JRQ and other national RPV steels from numerous laboratories throughout the world. The JRQ test blocks distributed to the different laboratories were mainly from test plate 6JRQ. The mean fracture toughness of the 6JRQ plate material generally can be described satisfactorily with the standard Master Curve method from ASTM E 1921-02. The mean T0 values shows in accordance with previous investigations that a bias of around 10 K exists between the T0 values of CT and SE(B) specimen types so that CT specimens give higher T0. The analyses of both JRQ and national RPV steels confirm that the procedures specified in ASTM E 1921-02, as well as the SINTAP procedure, are generally valid and applicable for characterizing RPV type steels and even steels showing distributed inhomogeneity.