Fatigue Life Estimation of Notched Structural Components

Abstract

This work considers the analytical/numerical methods and procedures for obtaining the stress intensity factors and for predicting the fatigue crack growth life of notched structural components. Many efforts have been made during the past two decades to evaluate the stress intensity factor for corner cracks and for through cracks emanating from fastener holes. A variety of methods have been used to estimate the stress intensity factor (SIF), values, such as approximate analytical methods, finite element method (FEM), finite element alternating, weight function, photo elasticity and fatigue tests. In this paper the analytic/numerical methods and procedures were used to obtain SIF, and predict the fatigue crack growth life for cracks at attachment lugs. Single through crack in the attachment lug analysis is considered. For this purpose analytic expressions are evaluated for SIF of cracked lug structures. For validation of the analytic stress intensity factors of cracked lugs, FEM with singular finite elements is used. Good agreement between computation and experimental results for fatigue life of aircraft cracked lugs was obtained. To determine crack trajectory of cracked structural components under mixed modes,, conventional singular finite elements and X-FEM are used.