IDENTIFICATION AND PROBABILISTIC MODELING OF MESOCRACK INITIATIONS IN 304L STAINLESS STEEL

Abstract

A probabilistic model is proposed to simulate the growth of fatigue damage in an austenitic stainless steel at a mesoscopic scale. Several fatigue mechanical tests were performed to detect and quantify mesocrack initiations for different loadings by using digital image correlation. The number of initiated mesocracks is experimentally determined. The process is then described by a Poisson point process. The intensity of the process is evaluated by using a multi-scale approach based on a probabilistic crack initiation law in a typical grain.