Crack Propagation of CCT Foam Specimen under Impact Fatigue

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the low or high strain rate on the impact fatigue properties of the nickel foam material and to understand the lifetime of this material which is subjected to the repeated impacts at different energy levels. Failures of foam materials under single and repeated impacts analogous to fatigue are essential to designers and users in military and aerospace structures. The material failure induced by repeated impact loading becomes a critical issue because of significant loss of stiffness and compressive strength in the foam material. Testing methods to study impact(that is, high strain rate) fatigue are quite numerous; no single standard testing procedure is defined for studying the impact fatigue property of a material. The increasing application of foam material in aerospace structures, owing to high specific stiffness and strength has attracted a great concern about the high sensitivity to impact damage introduced during manufacture or in service, and the effects of such damage on structural degradation. To investigate this issue, this study sets up an experimental procedure to determine the impact fatigue properties of nickel foam material. This study performs both experimental and numerical investigations to catch the impact fatigue behavior of nickel foam with open type. Design life and probability of failure or survival at specified life can be calculated so that the fatigue life of nickel core material subjected to repeated impact loading is predicted.