Issue 33

D. Nowell et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 33 (2015) 1-7; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.33.01 7 Figure 10 : Variations of relative displacement ( u y ) with distance from the crack tip ( r ) at four different values of load ( P/P max ) during the initial loading phase of a single cycle. A line of best fit produced with a least squares method is included for each load in the matching colour. Finally, in Fig. 9b, data from two consecutive loading cycles are presented. It will be seen that the cycles are very similar, illustrating the reproducibility of the technique. However, a small increase in  can be seen between the first and the second cycle, corresponding to the accumulation of damage at the crack tip and, possibly, crack tip extension. C ONCLUSIONS he paper has presented a technique for in-situ loading of a small compact tension specimen in a scanning electron microscope. It has proved possible to take high quality images of the area close to the crack tip during complete loading cycles. Constant amplitude data are reported here, but images from a single overload cycle have also been captured. Digital image correlation has been used to analyse the data using both an elastic and an elastic-plastic approach. Unsurprisingly, the elastic approach does not model the measured displacements well, particularly close to the crack tip. An elastic-plastic approach provides a better fit, but there are still deficiencies in capturing deformations close to the tip. This may be partly because the existence of the process zone at the tip affects the displacements measured at the grid locations, and these may no longer represent purely crack flank displacement. A more sophisticated elastic-plastic model is almost certainly in order to model the data more accurately, but the experiment had demonstrated the capability to measure displacements close to the crack tip which will be useful in calibrating other models. R EFERENCES [1] Paris, P., Erdogan, F., A critical analysis of crack propagation laws, Jnl Basic Engineering, 85 (1963) 528-534. [2] Nowell, D., Kartal, M.E., de Matos, P.F.P., Measurement and modelling of near-tip displacement fields for fatigue cracks in 6082 T6 aluminium, Proc. First I.J. Fatigue & FFEMS Joint Workshop, Forni di Sopra, Italy, March 7-9, 2011, Gruppo Italiano Frattura, (2011). [3] Nowell, D., Kartal, M.E., de Matos, P.F.P., Digital image correlation measurement of near-tip fatigue crack displacement fields: constant amplitude loading and load history effects, Fatigue Fract. Engng Mater. Struct., 36 (2013) 3-13. [4] Nowell, D., Kartal, M.E., and de Matos, P.F.P., Characterisation of crack tip fields under non-uniform fatigue loading, Proc. Second I.J. Fatigue & FFEMS Joint Workshop, Malaga, Spain, April 15-17, 2013, Gruppo Italiano Frattura, (2013). [5] Eberl, C. Thompson, R., Gianola, R., Digital image correlation and tracking with Matlab, Matlab Central file exchange (2006) http://www.mathworks.co.uk/matlabcentral/fileexchange/12413-digital-image-correlation-and-tracking. [6] Irwin, G.R., Plastic zone near a crack and fracture toughness, Mechanical and Metallurgical Behavior, Proc. Seventh Sagamore Ordnance Materials Research Conference, IV(1960) 63-78. [7] Pommier, S., Hamam, R., Incremental model for fatigue crack growth based on a displacement partitioning hypothesis of mode I elastic-plastic displacement fields, Fatigue Fract. Engng Mater. Struct., 30 (2006) 582-598. T 0.5