Modern high strength steels under high strain-rate regimes

Abstract

In order to properly design critical infrastructures and buildings in steel (bridges, high-rise building, off-shore, cranes, etc.), certain requirements concerning to mechanical resistance and robustness under exceptional actions have to be carefully fulfilled. An acceptable level of safety must be assured to avoid human loss, environmental pollution and material damage. These structures can be subjected to severe accidental loading such as blast or impact. In this context it is fundamental to adequately know the behaviour of structural steel under high strain rate. Modern high strength steels are quenched and selftempered steels. These steels have several layers with differentiated microstructures (martensitic in the cortical part and ferritic in the core). The behaviour of the single layer at high strain rate regimes have to be accurately studied. The paper collects and discusses the tensile results at high strain rate obtained on samples of homogeneous layers of S690QL and S960QL steels. Finally, the characterisation of the single layers has been used in order to analyse the results obtained in large specimen obtained from slabs 12mm thick.