COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CRACK GROWTH DUE TO MECHANICAL AND THERMAL LOADS ON A CURVED SURFACE

Abstract

In the high temperature regime, components fail by thermal damage at the defects, also failure can happen under mechanical loading of the parts, as it induces substantial amount of stresses around the defects. From the literature it is learnt that, much of the work has been done on study of combined mechanical and thermal loading effect on the life of the component with defects, hence mechanical and thermal loading effects on Stress Intensity Factor were studied independently. Finite Element Method is used to determine Stress Intensity Factor at the crack tip of an AT specimen with initial notch under mechanical and thermal loads separately. In case of thermal loading, both the inner and outer surface of the AT specimen was subjected to different temperature. Results so obtained were expressed in terms of the crack tip Stress Intensity factor, as defined by the theory of linear elasticity. Comparison of the results of mechanical and thermal loading are made and found in good agreement with the similar work done by the other authors.