The evaluation of stress intensity factors (SIFs) for cracks in mechanically fastened joints is one of the central issues in a damage tolerance analysis. Accurate stress intensity solutions may be difficult to determine due to geometric complexity along with variations in fastener load transfer and fastener interference and material thickness because of corrosion. Detailed finite element models...

We report on the in situ, time resolved, observation of solidification cracking in a thin sample of an Al-15wt%Sn alloy at ESRF BM05. During the experiment, solidification cracking was seen to occur during natural cooling of the sample at a solid fraction of ∼95%, between directionally agglomerated dendritic networks. Through detailed analysis, three stages of crack growth were observed: crack ...

Thermal fatigue in the mixing zones of pressurized water reactor pipings can potentially lead to the appearance of crack networks. Ultrasonic detection and characterization of a propagated defect in such a network is then a challenge. To study the influence of these secondary crack networks on the ultrasonic inspection of a propagated defect, a mock-up was produced. The innovative manufacturing...

Three-dimensional dislocation dynamics simulations are used to study micro-crack interaction with the first micro-structural barrier in face-centred cubic bi-crystals loaded in high cycle fatigue conditions. In the examined configuration, we assumed that micro-crack transmission occurs due to surface relief growth in the secondary grain ahead of the primary crack. This indirect transmission mec...

It is well known that the mechanical properties of materials depend of the rolling direction, which means that the direction of specimen cutting affect the obtained values. This feature also exists in the welded joint, where the anisotropy is caused by direction of the deposit welded layers. One high-carbon steel is surface welded by flux-cored wire and specimens were cut in order to determine ...

A new particle-based method, the material point method (MPM), has recently been extended to handle explicit cracks in a new algorithm called CRAMP or “CRAcks with Material Points.” This new method has several advantages for numerical work on fracture. Compared to finite element analysis, CRAMP can handle cracks with similar algorithmic efficiency, but is better at handling crack surface contact...

We investigated crack propagation in the drying process of a thin layer of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) paste experimentally. Cracks are induced by uniform desiccation from the top surface of a layer at the approximately same water content for various drying conditions. We found that the crack speed is a nonlinear increasing function of the drying rate at the cracking time although the tensile str...

Crack propagation in brittle materials with anisotropic surface energy is important in applications involving single crystals, extruded polymers, or geological and organic materials. Furthermore, when this anisotropy is strong, the phenomenology of crack propagation becomes very rich, with forbidden crack propagation directions or complex sawtooth crack patterns. This problem interrogates funda...

Modeling of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) is performed using the combination of the finite element method and the symmetric Galerkin boundary element method. The uncracked structural component is represented with finite elements. The crack is simulated using the boundary element method. The superposition principle is employed for combining two solutions. The equilibrium state for the system o...

Fretting fatigue induced by combined localized cyclic contact motion and external bulk fatigue loadings may result in premature and dramatic failure of the contacting components. Depending on fretting and fatigue loading conditions, crack nucleation and possibly crack propagation can be activated. This paper proposes a procedure for estimating these two damage thresholds. The crack nucleation b...