Fatigue crack growth simulation in particulate-reinforced composites by the equivalent inclusion method and distributed dislocation method

This paper presents an automatic fatigue crack propagation solution for particulate-reinforced composites. In this solution, the Eshelby's equivalent inclusion method is used to solve the elastic fields of a two-dimensional plane containing multiple elliptical inclusions. Then the continuous distributed dislocations in an infinite plane are adopted to model the multiple cracks in the plane containing multiple elliptical inclusions. By combining the two methods, a system of singular integral equations can be formulated based on the stress condition of the cracks. The stress intensity factor of each crack can be obtained by solving the singular integral equations. The propagation of the cracks is studied based on the maximum circumferential stress criterion. Numerical examples are presented to show the complicated changes in the stress intensity factors and crack growth behaviors of the cracks affected by the inclusions.