Ideally, it is preferable to obtain the fracture characteristics of a piping from the fracture toughness of real pipes. However, a fracture toughness test on real pipes not only incurs much expense, but is very difficult to perform. Therefore fracture toughness tests have been carried out with standard specimens instead of real pipes. But, the estimates of fracture toughness obtained from standard specimens are more conservative than those of real pipes owing to the difference in the constraint effect between real pipes and standard specimens. Therefore, we have been studied with equivalent stress gradient specimen (ESG) which is designed to behave equally compared to real pipe about stress gradient on crack tip. In this study, we will evaluate fracture characteristics of equivalent stress gradient specimen by using analytical methods and compare with those of real pipe. And finally investigate suitability of equivalent stress gradient specimen.
