An Analysis of Crack Propagation and a Plasticity-Induced Closure Effect

 

Slobodanka Boljanović

Stevan Maksimović

Andrea Carpinteri

 

In the present paper, a few computational models for the crack growth analysis are improved. The improvements consist of including the effect of the plasticity-induced crack closure, i.e. the effective stress intensity factor is computed through the finite element method in order to account the effect of plasticity-induced crack closure on fatigue crack growth. Thus, corrective factors for the effect of the plasticity-induced crack closure are determined here.

The improved models are noticed to provide a fairly good correlation with available experimental data. Furthermore, the calculated results show that the plasticity-induced crack closure has a significant effect on fatigue crack growth and flawed structure life.

Key words: material fatigue, crack, fatigue crack, crack growth, technological improvements, plastification, calculation method, finite element method.