Fatigue-crack-tip plastic strains by the stereoimaging technique

Abstract

The stereoimaging technique is an accurate, high-resolution means of measuring the in-plane displacements resulting from the deformation of a specimen so that the corresponding components of the strain tensor can be computed independently of the stresses. The example used in this paper is a fatigue-cracked specimen of a microscopically homogeneous experimental powder-metallurgy aluminum alloy, analyzed to determine the displacement and strain fields accompanying the opening of the fatigue crack. The displacement measurements are processed by a computer program which compensates for measurement fluctuations in the displacement data by smoothing, and derives the strain magnitudes. The principal strains and the maximum shear strain are determined using Mohr's circle, and the latter strain is then used to estimate the plastic-zone size. The crack-opening mode may be inferred from the displacement map, and the state of stress (plane stress or plane strain) inferred by applying the in-plane compatibility equation.