Stress Measurement at Fatigue Crack Tip using PSPC

Abstract

The growth of fatigue crack builds up the compressive residual stress with the plastic zone in front of the crack tip. The presence of this residual stress is one of the main causes for the crack closure. The consequence of residual stress is a reduction of the crack tip stress intensity variation during a load cycle. Although this effect is well understood in a qualitative manner, it has not been completely quantified because of a lack of information about the load and residual stress distributions at the crack tip.