INVESTIGATION ON FRACTURE PROPERTIES OF MEDIUM MANGANESE STEEL

Abstract

It is very important to know the critical conditions of final fracture of medium manganese steel so as to secure the railway safety. To assess the life of rail also requires critical fracture toughness data. In this study experiments were carried out on cut out specimens from head, to investigate KIC. In order to transfer the small scale specimen data to component, component was also tested. Component values are falling in lower bound values of small scale specimens. To -know which crack can be forgiven, threshold value was also determined. Kth is very high and KIC is less when compared to other steels. Material contains partial and high brittle zones in between. To fill the input data for fracture mechanics calculations, conventional tests were carried out and also correlated with fracture mechanics results. Cv energy gives good approximation for fracture toughness.