The pop-in phenomenon, quite common in fracture mechanics tests of welded joints, corresponds to a brittle crack initiation grown from a local brittle zone (LBZ) that is arrested in reaching the higher toughness material that surrounds this LBZ. A methodology to obtain a high percentage of pop-in occurrence in laboratory testing is necessary to study the pop-in significance. Such a method is introduced in this work and includes the consumable combination and welding procedures for the SMAW welding process to generate artificial LBZ. In order to find out the influence of the loading state upon the pop-in phenomenon, laboratory CTOD tests were performed using two specimen configurations: some single edge-notched specimens were loaded on a three-point bending (SE(B)) fixture while others were tested in tensile load (SE(T)). A higher frequency of pop-in occurrence was observed in the SE(B) geometry.
pop-in; local brittle zone; fracture toughness
