New Computational Procedures for Evaluation of Fracture Surfaces of the Drop Weight Tear Test of the Piping Steel

Drop weight tear test (DWTT) is one of the standard methods for evaluation of the ductility of large-dimensional structural components, such as pipelines used for gas and/or oil transportation. In general, the pipelines are even used in places with temperatures close to −40 °C, and in such environments, it is necessary to guarantee the resistance of the material used for pipeline against the initiation of unstable fracture. Currently, the percentage portion of the ductile fracture of the DWTT specimen is determined by an expert evaluator. The objective of this paper is to introduce new procedures working on the principle of deterministic, statistical and fractal description of the fracture surface. For the proposed computational procedures, the fracture surface of the test specimen is scanned at the macroscopic level using the 3D-Cam scanner. The newly investigated procedures show highly sensitive to the determination of the percentage portion of the ductile fracture on the tested DWTT specimens. The developed procedures to assess the fracture surfaces of the DWTT specimens contributes to making the results of this test more correct, objective and also increases the reliability and safety of the manufactured pipelines.