Search results for "fracture mechanics"
showing 10 items of 102 documents
Fatigue crack growth behaviour of four structural steels in air and in a geothermal fluid environment
1992
Abstract In recent years the exploitation of geothermal energy has expanded rapidly in Italy. This has created a requirement for improved drilling technology, to reduce the number of failures occuring in the drills, which is more frequent than in oil wells. This paper deals with the results obtained in FCCR tests of four materials both in air and in two types of aggressive environments. Deterioration takes place by fatigue, corrosion fatigue and hydrogen embrittlement. It is concluded that the steel G105 is a suitable substitute for S135 in drill pipes, and inspections between drillings may be adequate to prevent failure for small-curvature wells.
The Transverse Crack Tension test revisited
2016
Several problems arise when measuring the mode II interlaminar fracture toughness using a Transverse Crack Tension specimen; in particular, the fracture toughness depends on the geometry of the specimen and cannot be considered a material parameter. A preliminary experimental campaign was conducted on TCTs of different sizes but no fracture toughness was measured because the TCTs failed in an unacceptable way, invalidating the tests. A comprehensive numerical and experimental investigation is conducted to identify the main causes of this behaviour and a modification of the geometry of the specimen is proposed. It is believed that the obtained results represent a significant contribution in …
A novel frequency domain method for predicting fatigue crack growth under wide band random loading
2007
This work deals with the evaluation of the fatigue crack growth rate of structural components subjected to uniaxial Gaussian stationary wide band random loading. In detail, a new frequency domain method that allows the user to estimate the expected crack growth rate directly from the PSD data is proposed. Using a stochastic mean function properly, introduced and described by simple closed form relationships implemented by systematic numerical simulations of a high number of wide band random processes, the proposed method permits to avoid the onerous time domain simulations and provides in general crack growth rate predictions in a good accordance with the so-called time domain method. Pract…
Erratum to: Letter to the Editor [Engineering Fracture Mechanics 2003 (70) 1219-21]
2004
Erratum and Corrections
Risk Based Inspection Planning for Fatigue Damage in Offshore Steel Structures
2015
High fatigue reliability is one of the most important design criteria for welded offshore steel structures. Due to repeated wave loading fatigue cracks may initiate and grow in welded joints that are important for the integrity of these structures. The present paper presents the methodology and the practical calculations for risk based inspection planning for fatigue cracks in welded details. Due to the uncertainty in the variables involved in the problem the planning has to be carried out by stochastic modeling and risk based assessments. Scatter in potential crack growth has to be analyzed by applied probabilistic facture mechanics and the uncertainty in the performance of the actual insp…
Minimum bond length and size effects in FRP–substrate bonded joints
2009
Abstract The load transfer mechanism between the fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) materials and the substrate plays a crucial role in the overall response of retrofitted structural members. The FRP–support material interface can be studied by using pull tests in which a reinforcement plate is bonded to a prism and subjected to a tensile force. The experimental results obtained regard the assembly (FRP strip-support block), then a central problem is how to carry out the interface constitutive laws and the related parameters. The principal objective of the present paper is to contrive a procedure which, for a fixed interface constitutive law, permits to derive the interface mechanical parameter…
Proposal for a more accurate physically based S–N curve for welded steel joints
2009
Abstract The present article proposes a more accurate S–N curve in the high cycle fatigue regime for fillet welded joints in steel subjected to constant amplitude loading. The S–N curves are constructed based on a physical model of the fatigue damage evolution. It is a two phase model where the crack initiation is treated by a local weld notch approach. The subsequent growth is based on the concept of the stress intensity factor at the crack front by applying the Paris law. According to the proposed model, the time to crack initiation becomes the dominant part of the fatigue life at low stress range levels. The resulting S–N curves are non-linear for a log–log scale and they do not predict …
Energy models for fatigue life estimation under uniaxial random loading. Part II: Verification of the model
2001
Abstract The paper concerns verification of the energy model for the fatigue life determination under the uniaxial random and variable-amplitude stress state. Application of the energy parameter for the fatigue life calculation using the algorithmic method under the random and variable-amplitude uniaxial tension–compression proves that most results of the fatigue life calculation are included in the scatter band with the coefficient determined during the uniaxial cyclic tests. The strain energy density parameter seems to be efficient for the fatigue life determination in the ranges of high and low numbers of cycles. The analysis was based on the author's tests and the data from literature. …
On the dynamic behavior of piezoelectric active repair by the boundary element method
2011
The dynamic behavior of piezoelectric active repair bonded on cracked structures is analyzed in this article. The boundary element code used to perform the simulations is implemented in the framework of piezoelectricity in order to model the coupling between the elastic and the electric fields, which represents the most important feature of piezoelectric media. The fracture mechanics problem, i.e. the crack, as well as the bonding layer between the host structure and the active patch is modeled by means of the multidomain technique provided with an interface spring model. More particularly, the spring interface model allows considering the bonding layer as a zero-thickness elastic ply char…
Improved Planning In-Service Inspections of Fatigued Aircraft Structures Under Parametric Uncertainty of Underlying Lifetime Models
2014
Certain fatigued structures must be inspected in order to detect fatigue damages that would otherwise not be apparent. A technique for obtaining optimal inspection strategies is proposed for situations where it is difficult to quantify the costs associated with inspections and undetected failure. For fatigued structures for which fatigue damages are only detected at the time of inspection, it is important to be able to determine the optimal times of inspection. Fewer inspections will lead to lower fatigue reliability of the structure upon demand, and frequent inspection will lead to higher cost. When there is a fatigue reliability requirement, the problem is usually to develop an inspection…