A new method to predict fatigue crack growth rate of materials based on average cyclic plasticity strain damage accumulation

Abstract By introducing a fatigue blunting factor, the cyclic elasto-plastic Hutchinson-Rice-Rosengren (HRR) field near the crack tip under the cyclic loading is modified. And, an average damage per loading-cycle in the cyclic plastic deformation region is defined due to Manson-Coffin law. Then, according to the linear damage accumulation theory—Miner law, a new model for predicting the fatigue crack growth (FCG) of the opening mode crack based on the low cycle fatigue (LCF) damage is set up. The step length of crack propagation is assumed to be the size of cyclic plastic zone. It is clear that every parameter of the new model has clearly physical meaning which does not need any human debugging. Based on the LCF test data, the FCG predictions given by the new model are consistent with the FCG test results of Cr2Ni2MoV and X12CrMoWVNbN 10-1-1. What’s more, referring to the relative researches, the good predictability of the new model is also proved on six kinds of materials.