Charpy Impact test

Kalla Rohit, KVS Aditya, Kavya, Kesava Vishnu, Khagesh, Pravalika, Lipi
(IIST, Department of Aerospace)
(Dated :16th August, 2016 Experiment No :2)

Toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing.
To measure the toughness, impact testing methods are used. Charpy impact test is one of the
impact test methods in which a pendulum having hammer is held at 135◦ and released. Toughness
can be obtained by energy conservation. This can be found by measuring change in potential
energy of the hammer. The toughness of mild steel specimen was found to be 50.5 joules. The
findings are tabulated.

1 INTRODUCTION it can measure 300J in charpy test and 168J in

izod test. The pendulum can be moved upto
Toughness is one of the important character- a height of 135◦ . There is a separate locking
istics of a material. Material toughness is the system which holds the pendulum.
amount of energy per unit volume that a ma-
terial can absorb before rupturing. Toughness
can be interpreted as the area under stress-
strain graph of a material. The units of tough-
ness is J/m3 . The impact energy of a mate-
rial decides whether the material can be used
for structures which faces impact. The tough-
ness of a material depends on temperature, load
value, rate of loading, microstructures etc. The
size of the material is one of the important fac-
tors which decides the impact energy. Impact
energy can be used to find Ductile to Brittle Fig 1:Charpy impact tester[3]
Transition Temperature (DBTT) for a mate-
In Charpy impact test, the test specimen
rial[Appendix 2]. During that transition there
is simply supported. The specimen also has a
will be a huge change in the absorbed energy[1].
U-notch. Fig 2 shows the test specimen. The
The two most commonly performed impact
notch is used to produce a stress concentration.
tests are the Charpy and Izod tests. In these
On release, the pendulum swings down to break
two tests notched specimens are used for test-
the specimen. The energy absorbed in doing
ing. The notch is used to create a stress con-
so is measured as the difference between the
centration. In charpy test U notch is used[Fig
heights of drop before rupture of the test spec-
2]. A pendulum is used to create an impact
imen and is read from the maximum pointer
force on the material. The impact energy can
position on the dial scale.
be found using energy conservation[Appendix
1]. The main objective of this experiment is to
find the impact energy of Mild steel.

2 MATERIALS AND
METHODS
2.1 Testing Machine Fig 2 : Specimen with U-notch
Due to air resistance there will be a fric-
Fig 1 shows a Charpy impact tester. It has
tional loss too. Energy lost due to friction can
a pendulum which is mounted on antifriction
be obtained by releasing the pendulum in the
bearings. The Charpy tester has a dial with
absence of specimen. The specimen given was
the inner scale being for Izod and the outer one
mild steel.
for Charpy Impact tests. This dial is calibrated
to measure the energy directly. At maximum Impact energy = Eo − Ef (1)

1
Where
Eo = Energy obtained using dial reading
Ef = Energy loss due to friction
2.2 Methods
1.Determining the friction loss :The pen-
dulum is raised to its highest position(where
angle is 135◦ ) and clamped. The pointer is
set to 300 J(maximum value). The pendulum
is released by operating the lever. The pointer
reads the frictional loss.
4 DISCUSSION
High stress concentration at the notch leads to
the material fracture. The impact energy value
depends on temperature. So at room tempera-
ture the mild steel has a reasonable impact en-
ergy. As the impact energy depends on the tem-
perature, this experiment can be extended to
find the Ductile to Brittle Transition Tempera-
ture(DBTT)[2]. The temperature at which im-
pact energy drastically decreases can be taken
as DBTT.

2.Charpy test : The given specimen i.e mild
steel is kept in the position by using simple
support. The pendulum is again raised to its
highest position and clamped. The pointer is
set to 300 J. Using the lever, the pendulum is
released in order to hit the specimen. After
the pendulum reverses its swing, it is carefully
retarded using the brake mechanism . The
impact energy is noted down as indicated by
the pointer.
3 RESULTS
Fig 3 shows the test specimen after impact test.
It shows that the specimen got fractured due to
the impact which is applied.
The obtained values have some deviations
due to external damping factors like air fric-
tion, friction due to bearings etc. The size and
shape of the notch also determines the impact
energy.
5 CONCLUSION
The impact energy of the given mild steel spec-
imen is found to be 50.5 J. So at room temper-
ature the mild steel undergoes ductile fracture.
The impact energy of mild steel at room tem-
perature is quite reasonable. So the DBTT for
mild steel is below room temperature. Impact
energy of mild steel shows that it is more suit-
able to be use in the structural construction
that expose to high load and high impact colli-
sion such as vehicles body etc.

Fig 3 :Specimen after experiment

Table 1 tabulates the observation made
S.No Type of Energy Energy obtained
1 Frictional loss 0.5 J
2 Energy obtained 51 J
3 Impact energy 50.5 J
Table 1 : Observation
Dimensions of given material is
(55 × 10 × 5)mm
Volume of the specimen = 2750mm3
Therefore , Charpy impact energy of given mild
steel is (using eqn 1)
51 − 0.5 = 50.5J
6 REFERENCE
[1] John M. Holt, Charpy Impact Test:
Factors and Variables, ASTM International,
ISBN-0-8031-1295-5.
[2] Francois, A. Pineau, From Charpy to
Present Impact Testing, Esis Publication,
ISBN-1566-1369.
[3] Instrumented Impact Testing, American
(2)
Society for Testing and Materials,
ISBN-0-8031-0038-8.
[4] Impact Testing of Metals, ASTM
International, ISBN-0-8031-0038-8.

2
7 APPENDIX therefore

7.1 Energy conservation E = mg(h1 − h2) − L (5)

So Impact energy can be measured using eqn

5.

7.2 DBTT
At low temperature, the movement of dislo-
cations are restricted. So materials change
from ductile material to brittle material. The
temperature at which this transition occurs is
known as Ductile to Brittle Transition Temper-
Fig 4: A pendulum with hammer[4] ature(DBTT).
At any point of time the total energy of pen-
dulum is sum of its kinetic energy and potenial
energy. At the intial point, it has only potential
energy (velocity is 0). The potential energy is
given by mgh, where m is the mass of the pen-
dulum and h is the intial height.
T otalEnergy = mgh + 1/2(mv 2 ) (3)
where v is the velocity of pendulum at the point
and h is the height of the point from a refer-
ence. Often reference point is taken as mean
position. So at mean position, where h=0 ve-
locity attains its maximum value. When the
pendulum is allowed to swing freely there will
be a frictional loss due to air, bearings etc. Let
L be the loss due to friction. Graph 1 : Impact energy vs Temp[2]
In the presence of specimen the final height
attained by the pendulum is less than the in-
For brittle materials, the energy needed for
tial height. Let E be the impact energy and h2 fracture will be less because of the restriction
be the final height attained. So as per Energy in the movement of dislocations[Graph 1]. So
conservation this property can be used to find the ductile to
mgh2 + E = mgh1 − L (4) brittle transition temperature