An analytical fracture mechanics model for estimation of S–N curves of metallic alloys containing large second phase particles

Abstract

An analytical fracture mechanics model for predicting the finite life fatigue strength of components is presented which combines a number of well established and newly developed approaches such as Murakami’s and McEvily’s approach for describing the transient behaviour of crack closure of short cracks, the analytical (long) crack closure function of Newman which became part of the widely used NASGRO approach, the R6 procedure, a method for improving the ligament yielding correction f(Lr) of R6 proposed by the authors of the present paper and other elements. Basic assumption is the pre-existence of initial flaws such that the crack initiation or nucleation stage is small and can be neglected. The application of the model is demonstrated for small tension plates of aluminium Al 5380 H321 with artificial initial defects generated by FIB technology, the size of which was fixed on the basis of fractographic investigations on broken, smooth specimens.