Issue 33

J.T.P. Castro et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 33 (2015) 97-104; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.33.13 97 Focussed on characterization of crack tip fields Can  K eff be assumed as the driving force for fatigue crack growth? J.T.P. Castro, M.A. Meggiolaro, J.A.O. González Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro jtcastro@puc-rio.br , meggi@puc-rio.br , jaog1608@hotmail.com A BSTRACT . This work raises some new questions about the validity of blindly assuming that Elber’s effective stress intensity factor is the actual fatigue crack driving force, and that as so it can be used to explain all load sequence effects on fatigue crack growth (FCG). Although plasticity-induced crack closure can be a quite reasonable heuristic explanation for many non-elementary FCG behaviors, it has some limitations that cannot be ignored. In fact, this never settled discussion is particularly important for the simulation of FCG lives under real service loads, a most important practical issue. After arguing that  K eff can spoil the use of the most important similitude principle in FCG problems, simple but convincing experimental data that cannot be explained by this classical idea is presented here. This data involves the shape of fatigue crack fronts and the FCG behavior under nominally plane stress and plane strain conditions. K EYWORDS . Sequence effects on FCG; Near and Far Field Opening Loads; Crack Front Shapes. I NTRODUCTION atigue crack growth rates are very much susceptible to brusque changes in crack driving forces, which may cause important load sequence effects by significantly altering subsequent rates as compared to the rates induced by identical driving forces that have not been previously affected by sudden load changes. Such effects include delays, arrest, or even acceleration of FCG rates after tensile overloads (OL) or abrupt decreases in the applied stress intensity factor (SIF) range  K and/or peak K max ; sudden fracture caused by very large OLs; and reduction of OL-induced delays after compressive underloads (UL). The order of variable amplitude load (VAL) events can thus have a huge influence on FCG lives, particularly in cracked components that must tolerate rare but significant OLs during their duties. In fact, FCG lives simply cannot be properly estimated in many if not most practical applications if such load history effects are neglected. Such effects can be induced by several mechanisms that can be divided into three main classes [1]: (i) fatigue crack closure induced by plasticity, roughness, phase transformation, and/or oxidation, all mechanisms that act on the crack faces, thus before the crack tip; (ii) blunting, kinking, or bifurcation of the crack tip, mechanisms that act at the crack tip; and (iii) residual stresses and/or strains, mechanisms that act ahead of the crack tip. Moreover, the importance of the various mechanisms that can induce load order effects on FCG may depend on many factors, like for example: the sizes of the crack and of the residual ligament rl ; the transversal constraints around the crack tip; the residual stress state around the crack tip; the load and the overload (OL) ranges and maxima; the microstructure of the material; the number of OL cycles; and the environment. In many practical cases one of those mechanisms can be so dominant that the others may become negligible, but in other cases they may be not. Such mechanisms can act competitively reducing the effects of the others (e.g. crack tip bifurcation after an OL can reduce its opening load and decrease the subsequent influence of crack closure), or else, they can act symbiotically (e.g. as martensite is less dense than ferrite, martensitic transformation induced by plasticity increases the material volume inside the plastic zones, thus tends to increase residual stresses ahead, as well as crack opening loads F