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The use of miniaturized impact specimens is gaining widespread popularity in the scientific community,
especially for structural integrity assessments and residual life predictions on service-exposed and/or
irradiated plant components. Indeed, such evaluations have to be performed without sampling large
amounts of material from the component, if there is hope to keep it in service.
Instrumented impact tests on miniaturized Charpy V-notch specimens represent an important tool for
characterizing impact and toughness properties (FATT50, T41J, USE etc.) of a component, using a limited
quantity of sample material or, alternatively, machining them out of full-size specimen halves broken
during previous experimental campaigns.
The Technical Subcommittee 5 (TC5) of ESIS (European Structural Integrity Society), titled "Dynamic
Testing at Intermediate Strain Rates", has formed in 1991 a Working Party (chaired by the Author)
focused on these issues, with the primary aim of developing a test procedure for performing instrumented
impact tests on sub-size Charpy V-notch specimens.
Within this Working Party, a Round-Robin exercise was initiated in 1995, involving 14 labs (12 European
and 2 from the US), divided into 2 separate Phases, which has been concluded in the spring of 1998.
This paper will address and briefly discuss the most relevant results obtained in this Round-Robin, with
specific attention to the aspects related to the development of a test standard to be adopted in the
international testing community.