The ToughSteel project has celebrated a workshop to present the latest advances made by the academic community on the understanding of the link between the microstructure or sheet thickness and the Essential Work of Fracture (EWF) method.
This workshop, named “The Essential Work of Fracture method in 2022 – An essential method for sheet metal technologies”, was organised by the University of Louvain covered examples of applications where the EWF is used.
During the event, moderated by Pierre Bollen, Senior researcher from the University of Louvain, it was presented how modelling and deep microstructural characterization can help to improve the understanding of the physical mechanisms affecting the EWF.
Eva Schmidova, professor from the University of Pardubice, started the workshop by analysing the sensitivity of interstitial free (IF) steel to the localisation of plasticity using the EWF methodology. The validity criterion of the method regarding the steel grade and the notch preparation method were discussed.
The second session was delivered by Thomas Pardoen, professor from the University of Louvain, who presented the Essential Work of Fracture as a guide towards higher performance steels. After an introduction about the concepts of toughness and fracture toughness, Pardoen discussed the link between the classical mechanical properties such as the ductility and the mechanisms of fracture and how the geometrical parameters as the metal sheet thickness can affect these mechanisms.
Kim Nielsen, Associate Professor from the Technical University of Denmark, followed with a talk entitled “From the micro-mechanics to large-scale ductile plate tearing: an engineering modelling approach”. Using modelling, it was shown how to reproduce the flat to slant transition during the fracture of the specimen using energetic approach. The question concerning the effect of length scale on the fracture type (slant or flat) was also raised as a perspective for future work.
The workshop concluded with a Q&A session moderated by Thomas Pardoen.