Abstract
While fatigue crack growth can be measured by the standard unloading compliance method, it requires a proper COD gauge and may not be applicable in harsh conditions, such as high temperature or corrosive environments. On the other hand, modern fatigue test machines have an accurate built-in sensor to measure the stroke position, representing the total system deflection within the load train. In this paper, an innovative method is proposed to determine specimen compliance accurately from the total system deflection data. This method can be used to measure the fatigue crack growth of standard specimens without a COD gauge or any other reference specimen. Each individual test specimen serves as a reference for determining the in-situ machine compliance. Therefore, the only prerequisite is exact information on the initial crack length and the elastic modulus of the specimen. Test results from three different materials demonstrated that the method works very successfully for fatigue crack growth tests under constant or decreasing peak load conditions. The methodology was successfully implemented in the development of an automatic pre-cracker for fracture mechanics specimens. Additionally, fatigue crack growth tests at high temperature were successfully conducted under normal test room conditions.
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