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Development of numerical model for the determination of crack opening and closure loads, for long cracks
Author(s) -
Aguilar Espinosa A A,
Fellows N A,
Durodola J F,
Fellows L J
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
fatigue and fracture of engineering materials and structures
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.887
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1460-2695
pISSN - 8756-758X
DOI - 10.1111/ffe.12532
Subject(s) - materials science , crack closure , structural engineering , finite element method , closure (psychology) , plasticity , amplitude , crack growth resistance curve , crack tip opening displacement , fracture mechanics , mechanics , composite material , engineering , market economy , physics , quantum mechanics , economics
Abstract A two‐dimensional finite element (FE) model has been developed for determining crack opening and closure stresses, with the eventual aim of investigating plasticity induced closure effects on crack growth under variable amplitude loading. An issue with model verification is obtaining accurate experimental values of crack opening and closure loads. Validation was therefore carried out using experimental data from constant amplitude loading tests, recently obtained by the authors[1][Aguilar‐Espinosa, A. A., 2009], [2][Aguilar‐Espinosa, A. A., 2013] where there was good confidence in the accuracy of the opening and closing loads. Elastic–perfect plastic and work hardening material properties were investigated to determine the effect they had on crack growth. The modelling considered long cracks by dividing the crack into consecutive small lengths. For this purpose, the restart capability included in the ABAQUS code was employed. In addition, a mesh refinement strategy was optimised to reduce the memory requirements for the thousands of cycles analysed. This enabled both long crack lengths and small element sizes to be studied which has not been done in the literature before. The FE results were in good agreement with most of the experimental results, and possible reasons are given for some of the minor discrepancies observed.