Effect of mounting orientation on testing equipment on elastic compliance of clamped SE(T) specimens

Abstract

The accurate evaluation of fracture mechanics properties is key to the safety of operation of high responsibility structures, such as nuclear reactor components. This paper evaluates the impact of mounting orientation on the test machine of clamped SE(T) (SE(T)c) specimens on their compliance. The elastic unloading compliance is a commonly used technique to measure the crack depth of specimens within fracture mechanics tests. Inaccurate measurements affect the reliability of resulting properties. Two mounting orientations are evaluated in this paper, together with two SE(T)c specimens with different width-to-thickness ratios (W/B=2 and W/B=4). The conclusions show that machine stiffness is different in the two orientations, and that this value has the potential to affect crack depth prediction. On the other hand, the analysis scope of this work was unable to detect significant differences between the two orientations, probably because loading was limited to maintain specimen integrity. Further investigation is necessary to precisely address the impact of this effect.