Issue 41

F.V. Antunes et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 41 (2017) 149-156; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.41.21 149 Focused on Crack Tip Fields Effect of numerical parameters on plastic CTOD F.V. Antunes, R. Simões, R. Branco, P. Prates University of Coimbra, Portugal fernando.ventura@dem.uc.pt , http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0336-4729 www_rafael_inc@hotmail.com ricardo.branco@dem.uc.pt, http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2471-1125 pedro.prates@dem.uc.pt, http:// orcid.org/0000-0001-7650-9362 A BSTRACT . Fatigue crack growth (FCG) is associated with irreversible and non-linear processes happening at the crack tip. This explains different problems observed in the use of da/dN-  K curves, namely the inability to explain stress ratio and load history effects. The replacement of  K by non- linear crack tip parameters, namely the crack tip opening displacement (CTOD) is an interesting alternative. However, the determination of CTOD, using the finite element method, depends on different numerical parameters, not sufficiently studied so far. The objective here is to study the effect of these parameters on plastic CTOD, and therefore on da/dN-  CTOD p curves. A transient behaviour was found at the beginning of numerical crack propagation which is linked to the formation of residual plastic wake. Therefore, a minimum number of crack increments is required to obtain stabilized values. On the other hand, the predicted  CTOD p decreases with the distance to crack tip. Close to the crack tip, sensitivity to the measured values is much higher, but it also exists at remote positions. In addition, the mesh has a relatively low influence on  CTOD p . Finally, the effect of the number of load cycles between crack increments greatly depends on material properties. K EYWORDS . Crack tip opening displacement (CTOD); Plastic CTOD; Finite element method; Numerical parameters. Citation: Antunes, F.V., Simões, R., Branco, R., Prates, P., Effect of numerical parameters on plastic CTOD, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 41 (2017) 149-156. Received: 28.02.2017 Accepted: 15.04.2017 Published: 01.07.2017 Copyright: © 2017 This is an open access article under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. I NTRODUCTION he analysis of fatigue crack propagation is usually conducted by relating the crack advance per unit cycle, da/dN, to the stress intensity factor range,  K. Nevertheless, da/dN-  K relations have several limitations, namely: (i) such curves are completely phenomenological, not derived from physics, and the fitting parameters have units with no physical justification; (ii) such curves are only valid in the small-scale yielding range; (iii) and da/dN depends on T