The fatigue growth of a fiber reinforced composite laminate was characterized under thermal cycling using a combined experimental and computational investigation. Twenty-four ply composite laminates (1⁄20 12=90 12 ) are fabricated with a pre-existing delamination, and subjected to thermal cycling in an environmental chamber. The large mismatch in the coefficients of thermal expansion is used to...

A major part of fracture mechanics is concerned with studying the initiation and propagation of fatigue cracks. This typically requires constant monitoring of crack growth during fatigue cycles and the knowledge of the precise location of the crack tip at any given time. One technique currently available for measuring fatigue crack length is the Potential Drop method[1]. The method, however, ma...

Fatigue crack growth can be strongly influenced by crack closure, i. e., the contacting of the opposing faces of a fatigue crack above the minimum load in a loading cycle. This crack closure shields the crack tip from the full stress field, but different views are held regarding the extent of this shielding. The type of closure, whether it be plasticity-induced, or roughness-induced may also pl...

Understanding the fatigue crack growth phenomenon in railheads requires a study of driving forces such as the crack tip opening and sliding displacements, under repeated rolling contact. Finite element simulations, allowing elastic-plastic deformation, and mixed-mode crack growth laws were utilized to demonstrate that the fatigue crack growth rates display a minimum after a finite amount of cra...

Fatigue cracking is one of the most common failure modes of various load-bearing structures. Even though sensors of many different types have been developed for crack detection, very few can monitor crack growth with a high sensitivity. This paper presents an antenna sensor that is capable of monitoring the growth of fatigue cracks with a sub-millimeter resolution. According to microstrip patch...

A major drawback in using bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) as structural materials is their extremely poor fatigue performance. One way to alleviate this problem is through the composite route, in which second phases are introduced into the glass to arrest crack growth. In this paper, the fatigue crack growth behavior of in situ reinforced BMGs with crystalline dendrites, which are tailored to impa...

Serial mechanical sectioning and high resolution X-ray tomography have been used to study the three-dimensional morphology of small fatigue cracks growing in a 12 Cr tempered martensitic steam turbine blade material. A range of surface conditions has been studied, namely polished and shot peened (with varying levels of intensity). In the polished (unpeened) condition, inclusions (alumina and ma...

It is generally accepted that the fatigue crack growth (FCG) depends mainly on the stress intensity factor range (DK) and the maximum stress intensity factor (Kmax). The two parameters are usually combined into one expression called often as the driving force and many various driving forces have been proposed up to date. The driving force can be successful as long as the stress intensity factor...

Fatigue crack growth rate depends not only on the load amplitude, but also on the morphology of crack path. The strain energy density theory has the ability to analyze crack growth rate. A strain energy density crack growth model is proposed. It can predict the lifetime of fatigue crack growth for mixed mode cracks while an equation for mode I crack is also obtained. The validity of the model i...

ÐGamma-TiAl based alloys have recently received attention for potential elevated temperature applications in gas-turbine engines. However, although expected critical crack sizes for some targeted applications (e.g. gas-turbine engine blades) may be less than 0500 mm, most fatigue-crack growth studies to date have focused on the behavior of large (on the order of a few millimeters) through-thick...