Digital Repository, FCP2003

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Fatigue Crack Path in Non-Standard Fracture Mechanics Specimen
I. Kovše

Last modified: 2013-12-02

Abstract


Numerical simulation of the crack propagation in the geometrically nonstandardspecimen is presented. The procedure is automatic to that point that only thespecimen's geometry, the starting point of the crack and material parameters areneeded as input and the output of the simulation is, among other things, the crack path,the stress intensity factors and number of cycles depending on the crack length. Twodimensionalfinite element method is used in the calculations. Crack growth issimulated in a series of crack increments of finite size. Finite element mesh isautomatically generated after each crack increment. Numerical results are compared tothe results of the experiment on a specimen with non-standard geometry. During theexperiment the crack length was measured automatically from the compliance of thespecimen. Experimentally determined fatigue crack evolution is approximated by a 4-parameter empirical function, the derivative of which is used to describe the crack ratevs. stress intensity factor relationship

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