Evaluation of fatigue crack growth of interacting surface cracks

Since mechanical interaction between multiple cracks affects the rate of crack growth due to fatigue and stress corrosion cracking, it is important to consider its influence when predicting growth. In this study, a procedure predicting the growth of interacting surface cracks was developed. First, using the results of fatigue crack growth tests performed in a previous study, the transient growth behavior during coalescence and growth under interaction was evaluated based on area of crack face. It was shown that the area is a representative parameter of the growth of interacting surface cracks as well as independent cracks. The growth in area showed good correlation with the crack driving force defined using size of area. Then, in order to investigate the relationship between growth of interacting cracks and their relative spacing, crack growth simulations were carried out. The body force method was used to evaluate the change in stress intensity factors (SIF) during crack growth under interaction, and the simulation could reproduce the crack configurations obtained in the fatigue crack growth test. SIF of an interacting crack tip converges to that of a coalesced crack as the distance between cracks decreases. It was concluded that when the distance between cracks is small enough the cracks can be replaced with a semi-elliptical crack of the same area of crack face for a growth evaluation. The threshold offset distance for the replacement was suggested to be less than 0.1R(x), where R-x is the span length of two cracks on the surface.