Plastic influence functions for calculating J-integral of complex-cracks in pipe

In this study, the plastic influence functions, h₁, for estimates of J-integral of a pipe with a complex crack were newly proposed based on the systematic 3-dimensional (3-D) elastic-plastic finite element (FE) analyses by using Ramberg-Osgood (R-O) relation, in which global bending moment, axial tension and internal pressure were considered as loading conditions. Based on the present plastic influence functions, the GE/EPRI-type J-estimation scheme for complex-cracked pipes was suggested, and the results from the proposed J-estimation were compared with the FE results using both R-O fit parameters and actual tensile data of SA376 TP304 stainless steel. The comparison results demonstrate that although the proposed scheme provided sensitive J estimations according to fitting ranges of R-O parameters, it showed overall good agreements with the FE results using R-O relation. Thus, the proposed engineering J prediction method can be utilized to assess instability of a complex crack in pipes for R-O material.