Key Engineering Materials Vols. 488-489

Abstract: In mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering, thin plate structure is used widely. For the sake of fixing bolt, it often design open holes in the plate. Sometimes elliptic holes should be used inevitably. When the plate is overloaded or the load is changed regularly, flexural wave is propagating in the plate. Because there are holes, it can cause stress concentration. Stress concentration could decrease the bearing capacity of structure, and reduce the service life of structure. The problem of flexural wave scattering by holes in the plate is one of the important and interesting questions in aerospace engineering for the latest decades. There are lots of materials obtained by theoretical research and experimental investigation. The problem is complicated, because there are many factors influenced. It is hard to obtain analytic solutions except for several simple conditions. In this paper, based on the theory of elastic thin plate, by using wave function expansion method and multi local complex coordinates, scattering of flexural wave and dynamic stress concentration by double elliptic holes in the thin plate are investigated. In the complex plane, the displacement field aroused by incident wave and the scattering displacement field impacted by double elliptic holes comprised of Fourier-Bessel series with undetermined coefficients are constructed. Through applying the method of multi local complex coordinates, the equations with unknown coefficients can be obtained by using the stress-free condition of the double elliptic holes in the radial direction. According to orthogonality condition for trigonometric function, these equations can be reduced to a series of algebraic equations. Then the value of the unknown coefficients can be obtained by solving these algebraic equations. So the analytical solution of this problem is obtained. By using the displacement and stress expressions, an example is provided to show the effect of the change of relative location of the elliptic holes.

Abstract: Advanced finite element analysis (FEA) is carried out to simulate the off-axis crushing process of glass/epoxy twill/weave composite box structures. The FE results were compared to relevant experimental result and it was shown that the applied model is capable to predict the damage behaviour and energy absorption of composite box aero-structures under off-axis loading condition.

Abstract: Effect of high humidity on growth mechanism of a fatigue crack was investigated for an extruded bar of an age-hardened Al alloy 7075-T6 which had the marked texture of plane (111). Fracture in high humidity occurred by the growth of a shear mode crack under high stress levels, though a crack propagated in a tensile mode under low stress ones, macroscopically. Many voids and slip planes were observed on the fracture surface yielded by the shear mode crack. Especially most of the fracture surface was occupied by voids where the crack was small. The void percentage decreased with increasing in the crack depth. Fracture surface yielded by the shear mode crack was a plane (100). The growth direction of the shear mode crack to the cross section of specimen was about 55° corresponding to the angle composed by this plane and the texture of plane (111). These results suggest that the shear mode crack was related to microstructure, stress and environment. The growth mechanism of the shear mode crack assisted by hydrogen was proposed based on the results of the acceleration of crack growth and the formation of voids in high humidity.

Abstract: Dual Phase (DP) steels are widely replacing the traditional forming steels in automotive industry. Advanced damage models are required to accurately predict the formability of DP steels. In this work, Lemaitre’s anisotropic damage model has been slightly modified for sheet metal forming applications and for strain rate dependent materials. The damage evolution law is adapted to take into account the strain rate dependency and negative triaxialities. The damage parameters for pre-production DP600 steel were determined. The modified damage models (isotropic and anisotropic) were validated using the cross die drawing test. The anisotropic damage model predicts the crack direction more accurately.

Abstract: Impact and fracture toughness of a large number of medium carbon alloy steel specimens have been ascertained using standard ASTM procedures, apart from examining their chemistry, microstructure, cleanliness, tensile behaviour and fracture surfaces. The results indicate that the scatter associated with ductility, impact and fracture toughness is considerable unlike that for strength or hardness. Analyses of the role of undesirable elements on toughness properties indicate that the scatter associated with fracture resistance of the steel primarily originates from the amount of tramp elements.

Abstract: To ensure the safety of steel structures, it is important to evaluate the time-dependent corrosion behavior. The purpose of this research is to develop a method of predicting time-dependence of the corrosion surfaces of uncoated weathering steel plates in various corrosive environments. Atmospheric exposure tests were carried out on the uncoated steel plates for 0.5, 1, 2 and 4-years in Okinawa Island, Japan. Spatial statistical analyses were carried out on the corrosion surfaces of the tested specimens. In addition to this, the time-dependence of the corrosion surfaces were simulated by the spatial statistical technique.

Abstract: Stress corrosion cracking of 7050 aluminum alloys and ASTM A470 steel in the turbo expander and steam/gas turbine industry can cause expensive catastrophic failures, especially for turbo machinery systems performing in hostile, corrosive environments. Commercially available inhibitors were investigated for their effectiveness in reducing and controlling the corrosion susceptibility. Inhibitor effectiveness was confirmed with electrochemical corrosion techniques in different solutions. Polarization resistance increased with concentration of corrosion inhibitor due to film formation and displacement of water molecules. Cyclic polarization behavior for samples in the 1.0% and 5.0% inhibitors showed a shift in the passive film breakdown potential. The substantial increase in the passive range has positive consequences for neutralizing pitting and crevice corrosion cell chemistry. The strain to failure and tensile strength obtained from the slow strain rate studies for both alloys showed pronounced improvement due to corrosion inhibitor ability to mitigate SCC; the fractographic analysis showed a changed morphology with ductile overload as the primary failure mode instead of transgranular or intergranular cracking.

Abstract: The phenomenon of the Lamb wave interaction with fatigue crack in Al2024-T3 sheet was investigated at cyclic loading. Mentioned effect is associated with the crack open/close that change acoustic impedance of a crack. Analytical simulation of fatigue crack opening using the generalized Dugdale’s model of a crack in thin plate shows good accordance between the intensity of ultrasonic signal and a crack opening.

Abstract: Discontinuous velocity domain splitting method (DVDS) is a mesh free method which focuses on the strain localization and completely neglect the bulk deformations. It considers the kinematic variational principle on a special class of virtual velocity fields to get an upper-bound of the limit load. To construct this class of virtual velocity fields, the rigid-plastic body is splinted into simple connected sub-domains and on each such sub-domain a rigid motion is associated. The discontinuous collapse flow velocity field results in localized deformations only, located at the boundary of the sub-domains. In the numerical applications of the DVDS method we introduce a numerical technique based on a level set description of the partition of the rigid-plastic body and on genetic minimization algorithms. In the case of in-plane deformation of pressure insensitive materials, the internal boundaries of the sub-domains are parts of circles or straight lines, tangent to the collapse velocity jumps. In this case, DVDS reduces to the block decomposition method, which was intensively used to get analytical upper bounds of the limit loads. When applied to the two notched tensile problem of a von Mises material, DVDS gives excellent results with a low computational cost. Furthermore, DVDS was applied to model collapse in pressure sensitive plastic materials. Illustrative examples for homogenous and heterogeneous Coulomb and Cam-Clay materials shows that DVDS gives excellent prediction of limit loads and on the collapse flow.

Abstract: This present contribution consists of implementing an advanced GTN damage model as a "User Material subroutine" in the Abaqus FE code. This damage model is based on specific nucleation and growth laws in order to predict the void coalescence properties of the material. When applied, this implementation predicts the damage evolution and the stress state of notched specimens made from dual phase steel. By comparing numerical predictions with experimental results, the numerical approach was improved and then validated.