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Brittle-ductile transitions in vanadium and iron-chromium

T D Joseph, M Tanaka, A J Wilkinson and S G Roberts

Department of Materials,
University of Oxford,
Oxford OX1 3PH,
UK

Abstract

We report ongoing experimental work on fracture and brittle ductile transitions in vanadium, iron and iron-9% chromium single crystals and polycrystals. Tests were carried out by four-point bending of pre-cracked specimens in the temperature range 77K-300K, at a variety of strain rates. For a given material, variation of the brittle-ductile transition temperature with strain rate allows us to estimate an activation energy for the controlling process; for vanadium this was found to be ~0.37eV, for iron ~0.21eV and for iron-9% chromium ~0.11eV.

Journal of Nuclear Materials, 367-370, 2007, 637-643