Author(s)

J. Toribio

Abstract

In this paper the fracture behaviour of progressively drawn pearlite steels is studied under triaxial stress states produced by surface defects like cracks. To this end, samples from different stages of an industrial manufacturing process were analyzed. The real manufacture chain was stopped in the course of the process, and samples of five intermediate stages were extracted, apart from the original material or base product (hot rolled bar: not cold drawn at all) and the final commercial product (prestressing steel wire: heavily cold drawn). Results demonstrated that progressive cold drawing affects clearly the fracture performance of the materials, so that the most heavily drawn steels exhibit anisotropic fracture behaviour with crack deflection, i.e., a change in crack propagation direction which deviates from the original mode I

Keywords