Papers by Keyword: Crack Closure

Abstract: Fatigue crack growth (FCG) behavior at weld nugget zone (WNZ) and heat affected zone (HAZ) in friction stir welded (FSWed) joints joined by using a bobbin type tool in 5052, 6N01 and 7N01 aluminum alloys were investigated comparing to the base materials (BM). Constant stress amplitude fatigue crack growth tests were conducted with stress ratio of 0.1. Crack closure behavior was investigated simultaneously during fatigue test with unloading elastic compliance method. The results in this study showed that in near threshold region, FCG resistance in WNZ of FSWed 5052 and 6N01 joints was lower than that in the BM and the HAZ. In contrast, FCG resistance in WNZ of FSWed 7N01 joint was higher than that in the BM and the HAZ. At high ΔK region, WNZ of FSWed 5052 joint had the similar FCG resistance with the BM and the HAZ. However, WNZ of FSWed 6N01 joint showed lower FCG resistance compared to the BM and the HAZ. FCG resistance in WNZ of FSWed 7N01 joint was the similar with that in the HAZ but was lower than that in the BM. Crack closure behavior was observed in BM and HAZ for all materials tested. In WNZ, crack closure was found in FSWed 7N01 joint but was not found in FSWed 5052 and 6N01 joints. Difference in FCG behavior at different weld region was mainly due to difference in crack closure behavior in FSWed 5052 and 6N01 joints. However, in case of FSWed 7N01 joint, it is considered that effect of microstructure was significant on FCG behavior even at high ΔK region.

Abstract: Al 7075 alloy is a high strength material usually used for highly stressed components in lightweight structures, typically in aircraft, aerospace and defence applications. It can be applied in different heat treatment conditions, but the T7351 temper state is most widely used because of improved stress-corrosion cracking resistance. An investigation of effects of overloads on fatigue crack growth (FCG) and retardation in Al 7075-T7351 alloy was carried out. FCG rates were measured at load asymmetry R = F_min / F_max = 0.1, in quite wide region of growth between 10^-8 and 10^-5 m/cycle (stress intensity factor range ΔK between 6 and 40 MPa m^1/2). Retardation effects of overloads of the magnitudes 2.7-times and 3.0-times of the maximum load in the constant range fatigue loading were significant. Crack mouth opening displacement was evaluated at numerous stages of crack growth including pre-cracking with so called load shedding method. The overloads resulted in substantial crack closure effects, which, however, did not occur immediately after the overloading, but after further fatigue crack extension. Results are discussed considering both theoretically and experimentally estimated plastic zone size and considering crack closure issues recently published in the literature

Abstract: A hybrid experimental-numerical methodology is presented for the identification of the model parameters regarding a mixed hardening anisotropic finite plasticity fully coupled with isotropic ductile damage in which the micro-crack closure effect is given account for, for steel sheets made of DP1000. The experimental tests involve tensile tests with smooth and pre-notched specimens and shear tests with specimen morphologies recently proposed by D.R. Shouler, J.M. Allwood (Design and use of a novel sample design for formability testing in pure shear, Journal of Materials Processing Technology, Volume 210, Issue 10, 1 July 2010, Pages 1304-1313). These tests cover stress triaxiality ratios lying between 0 (pure shear) and 1/√3 (plane strain). To neutralize machine stiffness effects displacements of the chosen material surface pixels are kept track of using the digital image correlation system ARAMIS, where recorded inputs are synchronized with force measurements. On the numerical part, developed constitutive model is implemented as user defined material subroutine, VUMAT, for ABAQUS/Explicit. FE models for the test cases are built using 3D brick elements (rather than thin shells) and devising developed VUMAT for the constitutive model, model parameters are identified using an inverse parameter identification procedure where the objective function relies on the difference of experimentally observed-numerically predicted forces for the selected pixel displacements. The validity of the material model and transferability of its parameters are tested using tests involving complex strain paths.

Abstract: Plasticity induced crack closure (PICC) simulation using finite element analyses has been concerned by many researchers. In the present investigation elliptical corner fatigue crack growth from a hole was predicted using PICC method. An elastic-plastic finite element model is built with a suitably refined mesh and time-dependent remote tractions are applied to simulate cyclic loading. In a 3D geometry the crack opening value will vary along the crack front. For simplicity this shape evolution is neglected and the crack front is extended uniformly. Predicted fatigue life using crack closure method for elliptical corner crack is in good agreement with the experimental data. The results obtained highlighted the sensitivity of crack closure method to the opening stress intensity values.

Abstract: The fatigue crack growth behavior of one compact tension specimen of 16MnR steel under high-low sequence loading was investigated. The symmetric half finite element model under plane-stress state was used to calculate the elastic-plastic stress-strain responses, in which the Armstrong-Frederick type cyclic plasticity model was implemented as a user material subroutine UMAT of ABAQUS. A recently developed dynamic crack growth model was used to simulate the effects of high loading step on the successive low loading step. The detailed evolution process of the crack closure and cyclic plastic zone within the retardation region of fatigue crack growth was obtained. The extend of the crack closure, the size of cyclic plastic zone and the stress gradient have significant influence on the fatigue crack growth rate. The predicted fatigue crack growth rate is in good agreement with the experimental data.

Abstract: In the context of a R&D project concerning the new Alcácer do Sal composite railway bridge, a study of the fatigue crack growth on samples of its base material and weldments was performed. For this purpose, tests were carried out on CT specimens designed according to ASTM E647 standard, using the approximate thickness (B) of a structural detail of interest, B=32mm. The choice of B led to a relatively large specimen and was justified by the desire to better simulate service conditions, which would not be possible with smaller specimens, particularly in the case of weldments. The test matrix used included three values of R ratio (maximum/minimum load), 0.1, 0.4 and 0.7, and three material conditions, namely base material (BM), heat affected zone (HAZ) and weld metal (WM). When the nominal range of the stress intensity factor (DK) is used, the measured data displays a strong effect of the weldments on the FCG rates, with the base material presenting higher da/dN values. An evaluation of opening load behaviour was carried out, and it showed extensive closure caused by residual stresses in the HAZ and WM specimens. The investigation included the full field measurement of the residual stress perpendicular to the crack plane, using the contour technique. When the opening load effect was taken into consideration it was found that the da/dN vs. ∆K of the BM, HAZ and WM specimens is approximately identical. Furthermore if loading effects are considered, no significant difference is found for the three R values used, even if, as expected, higher R corresponds to higher da/dN values.

Abstract: Fatigue damage is a localized phenomenon controlled by the near-tip crack behavior. This paper presents an application of a dislocation distribution technique to the simulation of crack tip behavior under fatigue loading. A centre-cracked tension specimen under uni-axial fatigue loading is used in the study. Crack opening and plastic deformation around the crack tip are simulated by distributions of dislocation dipoles in crack plane and four inclined planes ahead of the crack tip. Climb dislocation dipole is used to model the opening and closing of the crack while glide dislocation dipole is used to simulate the backward and forward slip in the inclined planes during loading and unloading of the fatigue cycle. Stress field around the crack tip is obtained by the superposition of the contributions of the applied external load and the distributed dislocation dipoles. Correct boundary conditions of the model are achieved by employing a quadratic programming technique to minimize a properly constructed non-negative object function. It is found that the simulated crack closure variations under the constant amplitude fatigue load agree well with the result of a previously developed modified strip yield model with an appropriate constraint factor.

Abstract: The failure of rock materials in compression test suffers three characteristic stages: crack initiation, crack damage threshold, and macro-failure. There are some methods which can be adopt to identity the characteristic strengths in uniaxil or triaxial compression such as crack strain identifying method, AE activity and longitudinal wave velocity monitoring methods. In this paper, an creative experiment of recording stress-strain data, AE spectrums, and velocity of longitudinal wave is proposed and put into practice. Test results show that the mean initiation strength and damage strength by ratio of UCS are between 0.38 to 0.52 and 0.82 to 0.86 respectively with AE and longitudinal wave velocity methods synthetically. The AE monitoring method and the lateral P-wave or the axial S-wave test is an effective indicative of identifying the damage threshold when subject an axial compression failure.

Abstract: Crack closure concept is often used to explain the crack propagation behavior in cracked components. The effective stress intensity factor range is considered as a driving force of fatigue crack growth based on the traditional crack closure concept. The crack closure process and the plastic deformation near the crack tip were discussed in this paper. The standard compact tension specimen with the plane-stress condition was used to study the crack closure. A dynamic crack propagation method was proposed to simulate the effect of previous fatigue crack growth on the successive crack growth behavior. To obtain the accurately numerical results of stress and strain components, the Jiang and Sehitoglu cyclic plasticity model was implemented into ABAQUS as UMAT. With the detailed stress and strain response taken from the finite element (FE) simulation, the whole process of crack closure was described by the load curve. The load corresponding to maximum crack closure length is firstly proposed to describe the effect of fatigue damage. According to the results of FE simulation, the cyclic plasticity of the material near the crack tip persists during the crack closure period and should not be ignored.

Abstract: Natural or anthropogenic CO₂ pipelines have been in operation in USA, Europe and North Africa for almost three decades, which are aimed at implementing EOR(enhanced oil recovery) technology and (more importantly) developing CCS(carbon capture and storage) technology. At present, there is no specific pipe standard for CO₂ transportation pipelines. Instead, oil & gas pipeline system is directly introduced into the field of CO₂ transportation piping. Therefore, the technical details for oil & gas pipelines transporting supercritical CO₂ should be carefully taken into consideration due to the relevant effects of different impurities in the transported CO₂ and the different transportation environment for these two mediums, i.e. oil&gas mixture and CO₂. For the application of anthropogenic CO₂ pipe transportation technique, this paper will address a FE-based method which can evaluate fatigue life of a supercritical CO2 transmission pipeline containing an inner crack. Specifically, a portion of welded round steel pipeline is selected as the object of our analysis. And under the inner pressure fluctuation scenarios, an FRANC2D finite element procedure is generated to simulate mode-I crack extension from a given inner edge crack and to calculate the corresponding stress intension factors(SIFs) varied with different cracking depths. Afterwards, considering the effects of crack closure, the Paris equation is modified to build an integral analysis method for the fatigue life evaluation of CO₂ pipeline. Thus, the relation between the fatigue life and the inner pressure fluctuation range can be determined by performing the proposed fatigue crack growth analysis, which can also provide a LEFM-based pipeline selection method in terms of fatigue durability other than the conventional method coming from the structural strength theory.