Testing Cold Work Embrittlement Behaviour: A Round Robin

The potential for cold work embrittlement (CWE) to occur in steel has attracted world-wide concern from steel makers and steel users, but no in-service failures have been reported and the commercial significance of this phenomenon is still not clear. Since no international or European standard test to determine the CWE behaviour of materials is available, a Round Robin test was carried out by several European steel companies. The present paper discusses the results obtained from this Round Robin test and concludes that the equivalent plastic strain seems to be the most suitable parameter which makes the interpretation of various testing methods independent.