Experimental and theoretical analysis of heat flux at fatigue crack tip under mixed mode loading

Abstract

The work is devoted to experimental and theoretical study of heat dissipation at the fatigue crack tip during mixed mode loading. The plane samples of stainless steel (AISI 304) were weakened by notch to initiate fatigue crack. There were two types of samples for uniaxial loading and biaxial loading. Infrared thermography and the contact heat flux sensor based on the Seebeck effect were used to measure the dissipated thermal energy. The samples were subject to cyclic loading with constant stress amplitude and different biaxial coefficients. The experimental results confirmed the hypothesis about two stages of heat dissipation at fatigue crack tip under Paris regime. At the first stage, the power of heat flux is proportional to the product of the crack rate by the crack length. The second stage is characterized by a traditional linear relationship between the crack rate and the heat flux. The theoretical approach to calculate dissipation energy at fatigue crack tip was obtained. This technique based on link between the elastic-plastic and elastic strain fields at crack tip using the coupling between Young’s modulus and the secant plasticity modulus.