Fatigue crack growth was investigated in Haynes 230, a nickel-based superalloy. Anisotropic stress intensity factors were calculated with a least squares algorithm using the displacements obtained from digital image correlation. Crack opening/sliding levels were measured by analysing the relative displacement of crack flanks. Reversed crack tip plastic zones were calculated adopting an anisotro...

The Interaction of a crack with rigid circular cylindrical inclusions is considered for the case of longitudinal shear deformation. General representations of the solutions for a radial crack near a single and midway between two inclusions are given. The particular case of uniform shearing stress applied at infinity is discussed in detail. Expressions for the crack tip stress intensity factor K...

Two distinct mechanisms of crack initiation and advance by void growth have been identified in the literature on the mechanics of ductile fracture. One is the interaction a single void with the crack tip characterizing initiation and the subsequent void by void advance of the tip. This mechanism is represented by the early model of Rice and Johnson and the subsequent more detailed numerical com...

The effects of anisotropy during mixed mode fatigue crack growth were studied in single crystal 316L stainless steel. An anisotropic least-squares regression algorithm using displacements from digital image correlation was developed to find the effective stress intensity factors, KI and KII, and the T-stress. Crack tip plastic zones were determined using an anisotropic yield criterion. Strains ...

We propose a minimal nonlinear model of brittle crack propagation by considering only the motion of the crack-tip atom. The model captures many essential features of steady-state crack velocity and is in excellent quantitative agreement with many-body dynamical simulations. The model exhibits lattice-trapping. For loads just above this, the crack velocity rises sharply, reaching a limiting valu...

Recent finite-element results by S. Cl. Larsson and A. J. Carlsson suggest a limited range of validity to the ‘small scale yielding approximation’, whereby small crack tip plastic zones are correlated in terms of the elastic stress intensity factor, It is shown with the help of a model for plane strain yielding that their results may be explained by considering the non-singular stress, acting p...

The experimentally determined marked rise of the stress intensity factor required to initiate crack propagation in brittle solids under variably high loading rates, is analyzed. This problem of fracture initiation at the tip of a crack is considered in terms of activating a flaw at some distance away from the tip. By using a semi-infinite crack in an unbounded two-dimensional solid subjected to...

A series of molecular dynamics simulations using the embedded atom method is conducted to investigate crack propagation under mode I loading in a Ni single crystal with and without defects. The crack system (0 0 1)[1 0 0] in a slab of 160 000 atoms was studied. Defects consisting of lines of vacancies were introduced near the crack tip. Critical loads and strain energy distributions around the ...

A concurrent multigrid method is devised for the direct estimation of stress intensity factors (SIF) and higher order coefficients of the elastic crack tip asymptotic field. The proposed method bridges three characteristic length scales that can be present in fracture mechanics: the structure, the crack and the singularity at the crack tip. For each of them, a relevant model is proposed. First,...

Fatigue crack growth can be strongly influenced by crack closure, i. e., the contacting of the opposing faces of a fatigue crack above the minimum load in a loading cycle. This crack closure shields the crack tip from the full stress field, but different views are held regarding the extent of this shielding. The type of closure, whether it be plasticity-induced, or roughness-induced may also pl...