Issue 36

L. C. H. Ricardo et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 36 (2016) 201-215; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.36.20 208 Figure 6 : FEM Model of CT specimen. Figure 7 : FD&E SAE Suspension Modified Load History. In the analysis, fatigue crack growth is simulated by releasing the crack tip node at P min , followed by a single loading cycle P min  P max  P min, Fig. 7. The force is divided in nine steps between loads P min - P max and nine steps between the P max -P min , in each cycle. The smallest element size, 0.025 mm, was estimated based on the plastic zone size ( r p ) ahead of the crack tip and computed by Eq. (3.2). Only the first 20 reverses from load history shown in Fig. 7 were used to identify crack opening/closing and retardation effects. max max 1 2 P a K f W BW        (3.1) 2 max 1 p y K r            plane stress (3.2) where: K max = maximum stress intensity factor; P min = minimum applied load; P max = maximum applied load; B = specimen thickness; a = crack length; W = width of the specimen;