In order to achieve safety and reliability of the pipeline installed in seismic region, it is quite important to apply the high-strength linepipes with sufficient strain capacity against buckling and weld fracture by the seismic ground movement. Dual-phase microstructure control is an essential measure for improving strain capacity of linepipe steels. Ferrite-bainite or bainite-MA microstructures are practically applied to the linepipes for the strain-based design to achieve higher deformability which has low Y/T (Yield/Tensile strength) ratio and high uniform elongation even after pipe coating. On the other hand, dual-phase steels tend to show lower Charpy energy in the upper shelf region than single-phase steel. It is considered that void nucleation and growth is enhanced in the dual-phase steels due to the strain concentration at the boundary between two different phases, resulting in early cracking in the specimen that leads to lower Charpy energy.
The Charpy energy of the bainite-MA dual-phase steels was strongly affected by the volume fraction and size of MA. In the case of Bainite-MA steels with fewer volume fraction of MA and smaller size of MA, the sample showed higher Charpy energy. Ductile fracture behavior was investigated through several kinds of Charpy impact tests in order to clarify the effect of these microstructure differences on the Charpy energy in the upper shelf region. From the SEM observation, it was found that void nucleation was enhanced in the sample with higher volume fraction of MA and larger size of MA. It is considered that the increase of boundary area that works as void nucleation site affected these results. Experimental results were mainly discussed in this paper.
