PSI - Issue 81

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ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 81 (2026) 547–551

© 2026 The Authors. Copy from the contract: Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of DMDP 2025 organizers Keywords: cold drawing; pearlitic steel; steel wires; mechanical properties; tensile fracture; fractographic analysis; anisotropic behaviour. 1. Introduction Pearlitic steels are widely used in a high variety of applications in engineering, e.g. prestressing steel wires, railway rails, rock bolts, steel cord wires (tire reinforcement), music wires, etc. The wide use of these types of steels is due to their excellent mechanical properties. As a result of the plastic strains undergone by the material during manufacturing, a strain-hardening mechanism is activated with the consequence of an improvement of both yield strength and ultimate tensile strength (UTS), so as the resulting material is a very high strength steel. The paper studies the local anisotropy of fracture behaviour in heavily cold drawn pearlitic steels supplied in the form of prestressing steel wires for prestressed concrete. A study is presented of the tensile fracture behaviour of progressively drawn pearlitic steels obtained from real cold drawing chains, including each drawing step from the initial hot rolled bar (not cold drawn at all) to the final commercial product (prestressing steel wire). Abstract The paper studies the local anisotropy of fracture behaviour in heavily cold drawn pearlitic steels supplied in the form of prestressing steel wires for prestressed concrete. A study is presented of the tensile fracture behaviour of progressively drawn pearlitic steels obtained from real cold drawing chains, including each drawing step from the initial hot rolled bar (not cold drawn at all) to the final commercial product (prestressing steel wire). To this end, samples of the different wires were tested up to fracture by means of standard tension test, and later, all the fracture surfaces were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). A locally anisotropic fracture behaviour is observed in the cold drawn wires that does not become global due to the lack of stress triaxiality (constraint) in the smooth (unnotched) wires. VIII International Conference “In -service Damage of Materi als: Diagnostics and Prediction” (DMDP 2025) Local anisotropy of fracture behaviour in cold drawn pearlitic steels supplied in the form of prestressing wires: A Picassian Approach Jesús Toribio* Fracture & Structural Integrity Research Group (FSIRG), University of Salamanca (USAL) E.P.S., Campus Viriato, Avda. Requejo 33, 49022 Zamora, Spain

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +34-677566723; fax: +34-980545002. E-mail address: toribio@usal.es

2452-3216 © 2026 The Authors. Copy from the contract: Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of DMDP 2025 organizers 10.1016/j.prostr.2026.03.093