Solid Mechanics EMM331

Ir. Dr. Feizal Yusof

Fatigue Lecture 3
Week 13-14 (6 hrs)

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 Topics for today
• Fatigue and crack growth
• Micromechanics of fatigue
• Paris law

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 Introduction
1. Fatigue, as understood by materials
technologists, is a process in which
damage accumulates due to the
repetitive application of loads that
may be well below the yield point.
2. The process is dangerous because a
single application of the load would
not produce any ill effects, and a
conventional stress analysis might
lead to an assumption of safety that
does not exist.
3. In one popular view of fatigue in
metals, the fatigue process is thought
to begin at an internal or surface flaw
where the stresses are concentrated
and consists initially of shear flow
along slip planes.
4. Over a number of cycles, this slip
generates intrusions and extrusions
that begin to resemble a crack.
5. A true crack running inward from an
intrusion region may propagate
initially along one of the original slip
planes, but eventually turns to
propagate transversely to the
principal normal stress as seen in Fig.
1.
Fig 1: Intrusion-extrusion model of
fatigue crack initiation 3
 Introduction
5. When the failure surface of a
fatigued specimen is examined, a
region of slow crack growth is usually
evident in the form of a “clamshell"
concentric around the location of the
initial flaw. (See Fig. 2.)
6. The clamshell region often contains
concentric “beach marks" or
“striations” at which the crack was
arrested for some number of cycles
before resuming its growth.
7. Eventually, the crack may become
large enough to satisfy the energy or
stress intensity criteria for rapid
propagation, following the previous
expressions for fracture mechanics
8. This final phase produces the rough
surface typical of fast fracture. In
postmortem examination of failed
parts, it is often possible to correlate
the beach marks with specific
instances of overstress, and to
estimate the applied stress at failure
from the size of the crack just before
rapid propagation and the fracture
toughness of the material.
Fig 2: Failure surface
of a bolt
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 Introduction
Clamshell
Striations

Beachmark or
Striations Clamshell

Cup and cone

Fig 2: Failure surface
of a bolt

Separation surface Rough surface

Cup-cone (ductile)
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 Micromechanism of fatigue
1. The fatigue mechanism has 2 distinct
phases, initiation of a crack and the
propagation of this crack to final
rupture of the material.
2. Several micromechanisms theory:
a) Slip bands (Fig 3a)
b) Movement of dislocation (Fig 3a)
c) Intrinsic defects (Fig 3c)
3. Ewing and Humfrey (1910)
a) Above certain value of cyclic stress (the
fatigue limit), some crystals on the surface of
the specimen developed bands during
cycling.
b) These bands are resulted from sliding and
shearing of atomic planes within the crystal
and are termed slip bands. 3a
c) With continued cyclic action, the slip bands
broaden and intensify to the point where
separation occurs within one of the slip
bands and a crack is formed.
4. Forsyth (1950)
a) Discovered that the process of intrusion and
extrusion at the surface could cause a crack
to be formed as shown in Fig 3a. 6
 Micromechanism of fatigue
5. Ashby and Jones (1980)
a) In a material which is free from defects, a
tensile stress produces a plastic zone
which causes the crack tip to stretch open
by an amount d shown in Fig 3(b).
b) This creates new surface at the crack tip.
c) During compressive cycle, the crack is
squeezed shut and the new surface folds.
d) This causes the crack to advance by an
amount approximately equal to d.
e) This process is then repeated during each
cycle so that the crack growth rate
𝑑𝑎/𝑑𝑁 is approx to equal to d.
f) In real engineering material, there will
always be microscopic defects. As a result,
these holes will link up with one another
and with the crack tip Fig 3(b).
g) The crack will thus advance a little faster
than Fig 3(b) because it is aided by the
holes.
3b

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 Micromechanism of fatigue
6. In recent times, it has been
suggested that fatigue is initiated by
the movement of dislocations.
a) A dislocation is a fault or misplacement in
the atomic lattice of the metal.
b) Microscopic plastic deformation allows 7. However, investigations revealed that
dislocation or vacancies to move through
there is fatigue crack growth
the atomic lattice as shown in below.
threshold below which cracks can
exist in a material but will not
propagate (Dislocation, Precipitates).
Fig 3c.

c) But some have argued that dislocations

are much too small to have any real effect
and it is suggested that cracks develop
from intrinsic defects in the material or
3c
precipitates
d) These may be of the order of 0.5 µm in
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size.
 Initiation and propagation
1. When a crack is dormant (does not
grow), or it is assumed to be below
the crack growth threshold limit.
Structure can function without worry.
2. Although operating load of structure
does not change, there will be
instances where the applied load can
change due to earthquakes,
accidents, etc.
3. How do we characterize the behavior
of the crack when loads can change
and thus cause the crack to grow!!
4. Emergence of fracture mechanics has
cast new light on fatigue crack
growth phenomena.
5. Fracture mechanics also permits life
expectancy to be predicted for a
material or structure containing a
crack-like defect of known size.
6. Using 𝑆 − 𝑁 curve, it is not possible
to calculate the life expectancy
because it does not separate the
initiation and propagation phases.
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 Fatigue & Fracture mechanics
1. Certainly in aircraft, but also in other
structures as well, it is vital that
engineers be able to predict the rate
of crack growth during load cycling,
so that the part in question can be
replaced or repaired before the crack
reaches a critical length.
2. Through experimental evidence Paris
(1959) proposed an empirical
approach known as the Paris law.
3. The law states that crack growth rate
can be correlated with the cyclic
variation in the stress intensity factor.
4. To explain the law, Fig 4 shows a
typical experiment of a crack (𝑎! )
cycled (𝑁" ) to a final crack length
(𝑎" ). Fig 4: Crack growth rates vs the change of
the stress intensity factor
5. From the experiment, a 𝑑𝑎/𝑑𝑁 vs ΔK
curve can be plotted as shown in Fig
4. 10
 Paris Law
1. Example of crack growth analysis
indicate an inverted S shaped curve
when crack growth increase in typical
test specimen
2. 4 distinct regions can be observed,
1) No growth-Threshold (<<Δ𝐾!" )
2) Slow growth (≅ Δ𝐾!" )
3) Stable crack growth (Δ𝐾!" < Δ𝐾 < Δ𝐾#$ )
4) Rapid crack growth (> Δ𝐾#$ )
3. Test of different 𝑅 for same crack
configurations indicate that crack
growth influenced by 𝑅-ratio, larger
𝑅 will cause crack to grow faster.
4. In stable crack growth, behavior of
crack can be predicted by a linear
relationship:
#$
#%
= 𝐶 D𝐾 𝑚 ---(1)
Fig 5: Crack growth rates vs the change of 11
the stress intensity factor
 Paris law
Δ𝐾 = 𝐾&$' − 𝐾&!( ---(2) 5. The stable crack growth region is the
and region of particular importance in
Δ𝐾 = Δ𝑆 𝜋𝑎 𝑌 ---(3) Fatigue because this region shows
crack growing but at a stable rate.
Δ𝐾 = 𝑆&$' − 𝑆&!( 𝜋𝑎 𝑌 ---(4)
6. Out of this region, to the left, crack
but similarly do not grow; to the right, crack
Δ𝐾 = 𝜎&$' − 𝜎&!( 𝜋𝑎 𝑌 ---(5) growth is uncontrollable and
So replacing (5) in (1), we have structure can fail like brittle or ductile
#$ failure.
= 𝐶 𝜎&$' − 𝜎&!( 𝜋𝑎 𝑌 𝑚 ---(6)
#% 7. Within the stable crack growth
region, the severity of crack can be
predicted and the functioning life of
the structure can be estimated.

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 Paris law
8. Typical values of 𝐶 and 𝑚 for a range
of materials are given in Table 1.
9. The way in which the crack growth
rate varies during cycling is shown in
Fig.8.
10. At the lower end, there is a threshold
value of stress intensity range DKth
below which the crack will not
propagate.
11. It has been found that for most
metals DKth is approximately
proportional to the elastic modulus
𝐸.
12. At the upper end, the crack growth
rate tends towards an infinitely large
value.
13. As the crack grows, Kmax increases
and failure will occur when the
remaining ligament of material ahead
of the crack tip fails by plastic
collapse.
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 Example 1: Find 𝐶 and 𝑚
1. A typical compact tension specimen
Fig. 6 is used to extract data of crack
growth rate 𝑑𝑎/𝑑𝑁 as a function of
the stress intensity range is shown in
Fig. 7 for a 4340 steel material
Fig. 6 : Crack growth rate experiment using a
compact tension specimen
2. From the data, find the approximate
values of constants 𝐶 (Paris law
constant) and 𝑚 (material property)
and state the Paris law equation for
data 𝑅 = 0.1 in Fig 7.
Fig. 7 : Effect of R –ratio on crack growth rate
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 Example 1: Solution
1

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 What did we learn today?
1. Fatigue usually starts at the surface
of a component from a defect that
aggravates due to the load applied.
2. In metallic materials, the surface flaw
caused stress concentration and
create shear flow and then slip plane
appear then grow over the applied
cycles.
3. Through tests, of observing a crack of
a size 𝑎, with a load limited to linear
elastic condition, a number of cycles
𝑁 can grow the crack and the crack
growth rate 𝑑𝑎/𝑑𝑁 is dependent on
moduli of materials 𝐸, 𝜎) , 𝐾*+ and
the stress ratio 𝑅.
4. 4 regions of crack growth are
observed – no growth, slow growth,
stable and unstable.
5. In the stable growth region, a law to
predict crack growth is given by Paris
law.
6. Paris law states that:
𝑑𝑎
= 𝐶Δ𝐾 &
𝑑𝑁
A linear crack growth is influenced by the
change of the stress intensity.
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Check out Exercise 9(a & b) problems on e-learning at week
14
- You have to do within 20 mins
- You need to submit your solution on power point and
provide a recorded voice to explain your answers to the
questions.

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