Abstract
Cleavage fracture has been studied in a series of steels strengthened by vanadium carbide dispersions. It has been shown that the impact transition temperature is strongly dependent on the precipitation hardening contribution to the yield strength, this being more important than the precipitate volume fraction. Ageing of non-random dispersions shows that there is no significant difference between the mechanical properties of random and non-random (‘interphase precipitation’) dispersions. Fractographic investigation reveals that the interphase precipitate dispersion can change the path of a cleavage crack during fracture at room temperature, although this does not have any significant effect on the mechanical properties.
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