Numerical simulation of fatigue crack growth based on strip yield model considering work hardening of materials

This paper presents the improved numerical simulation of fatigue crack growth considering the crack opening / closing behaviour based on the strip yield model with the stress intensity factor weight function. The mechanical property in the primitive model corresponds to rigid-plastic material and is replaced to the elastic - perfectly plastic material in order to describe the elastic behaviour of material around a crack tip during the unloading process. However, the simulation model based on the elastic - perfect plastic material gives poor growth estimations under rapidly changing of loading histories, e.g. the spike loading. The possibility is pointed out that insufficient considerations of work hardening effect of materials lead the excess crack closure in the numerical simulations. Authors propose the improved numerical simulation fatigue crack growth considering the work hardening effect of materials in this paper. Comparison of proposed simulation results with previous ones and with measured results confirms the primacy of proposed method over previous ones.