Damage and repair evolution of cold formed linepipe steel

The main aim of this research is to model the internal micro damage accumulated during cold deformation and the degree of reduction of damage that can be achieved by heat treatment of linepipe steel. A set of unified viscoplastic constitutive equations was developed to simulate microstructural evolution and the effect on mechanical properties due to cold deformation followed by annealing. In addition, practical experiments have been performed to validate the constitutive equations. Firstly, the industrial motivation for the project was previewed and damage-modelling techniques were reviewed to identify the research objectives. A group of interrupted uniaxial tensile tests were conducted to study the effect of different annealing times on reducing the degree of damage and improving mechanical properties of a cold formed single phase linepipe steel. From the experimental results, it was observed that healing by subsequent annealing enables a significant improvement in the mechanical properties of the deformed steel that has experienced only light damage, but has no significant effect on heavily damaged steel. Following this, a set of constitutive equations describing accumulation and annihilation of dislocations, grain size evolution, recrystallisation, plasticity induced damage and their effects on viscoplastic flow of materials was developed, for uniaxial stress conditions and by numerical integration experimental results were used to determine material constants for these equations, for the particular steel. Secondly, the constitutive equations were expanded to enable damage nucleation, growth and plastic flow to be predicted for various stress states. The constitutive equations were implemented in a commercial FE solver (ABAQUS) using the VUMAT user-subroutine. The numerical results reproduce the essential features of necking phenomena and provide a physical insight into damage evolution within a tensile testpiece under given necking conditions. Dual phase steel is of greater importance industrially, than a single phase steel, but because of the greater complexity in its microstructure, the development of microstructural constitutive equations for it is very difficult. Thus, in this work, some knowledge of damage initiation in a dual phase steel was obtained by practical investigation of microstructure. It showed that damage is due to ductile cracking characterised by the nucleation of micro-voids near the ferrite-pearlite interface. Using the mesoscopic modelling technique, by simulation, it was possible to determine likely sites for damage initiation.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

d_ph

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

d_ph

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Birmingham

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Li, Huan

• TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery