Output details

A quantitative evaluation of fatigue crack shielding forces using photoelasticity

This work was an output from multidisciplinary collaboration between engineer and mathematician. The mechanisms controlling the phenomenon of plasticity-induced shielding during fatigue were investigated and quantified by fitting a recently developed model to photoelastic data. The model derives from the Muskhelishvili approach and includes additional new terms to describe the effect of plasticity on the elastic stress field around the crack tip. The insights from this work into the origins of plasticity-induced crack tip shielding appear likely to assist in reconciling conflicting observations of the so-called plasticity-induced crack closure obtained over the last 30 years.