Use of the small punch test for the estimation of ductile-to-brittle transition temperature shift of irradiated steels

Abstract The small punch test is evaluated as a screening procedure for irradiation embrittlement of reactor pressure vessel steels. In particular, the correlation between ductile-to-brittle transition temperatures obtained from this specimen technique and standard Charpy impact investigated. Small tests at different were performed on various steels including materials original vessels in unirradiated, neutron irradiated annealed condition. It demonstrated that reliable effective supportive means estimation irradiation-induced shift temperature. was found tanh-fit normalized energy dependence temperature preferable comparison to two-curve fit total energy.