A study of creep cavities near reheat cracking in AISI Type 316H austenitic stainless steel headers, removed from long-time high temperature operation in nuclear power plants, is reported. It is shown how application of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), cryogenic fractography and small angle neutron scattering (SANS) can be applied, in a complementary way, to observe and quantify creep cavita...

Fatigue crack growth is a complex process that involves interactions between many elements ranging across several length scales. This work provides an in-depth, experimental study of fatigue crack growth and the relationships between four of these elements: strain field, microstructure, crack path, and crack growth rate. Multiple data sets were acquired for fatigue crack growth in a nickel-base...

Résumé. We study experimentally the paths of an assembly of cracks growing in interaction in a heterogeneous two-dimensional elastic brittle material submitted to uniaxial stress. For a given initial crack assembly geometry, we observe two types of crack path. The first one corresponds to a repulsion followed by an attraction on one end of the crack and a tip to tip attraction on the other end....

Abstract—A model to predict the plastic zone size for material under plane stress condition has been developed and verified experimentally. The developed model is a function of crack size, crack angle and material property (dislocation density). Simulation and validation results show that the model developed show good agreement with experimental results. Samples of low carbon steel (0.035%C) wi...

Multi-layered bearing systems used in the automotive industry show shielding and antishielding effects that reduce or amplify the crack driving force under large scale yielding conditions. Using finite element analysis, it is shown that shielding in such systems results in path deflection and bifurcation despite the absence of mixed-mode loading. As the crack approaches a stiff layer, the tange...

In this paper, the effect of microstructure on the thermal conductivity of plasma-sprayed Y2O3 stabilized ZrO2 (YSZ) thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) is investigated. Nine freestanding samples deposited on aluminum-base superalloy are studied. Cross-section morphology such as pores, cracks, m-phase content, grain boundary density of the coated samples are examined by scanning electron microscopy...

This paper presents a new incremental formulation for predicting the curved growth paths of twodimensional fatigue cracks. The displacement and traction boundary integral equations (BIEs) are employed to calculate responses of a linear elastic cracked body. The Paris law and the principle of local symmetry are adopted for defining the growth rate and direction of a fatigue crack, respectively. ...

In this paper, the use of a cohesive-zone approach to model the mode-I fracture of adhesive joints made from a polymer-matrix composite is demonstrated. Cohesive-zone parameters were obtained by matching numerical results to experimental observations. It is shown that there is a distinction between the characteristic strength of the interface associated with the toughness, and the intrinsic coh...

In this study, an analytical model is developed to study crack breathing behavior under the effect of crack location and unbalance force. Crack breathing behavior is determined using effectual bending angle by studying the transient change in closed area of the crack. The status of the crack of a balanced shaft is symmetrical about shaft rotational angle and the duration of each crack status re...