Rui Bao

Crack Growth Life Estimating for MSD Panel

The problem of multiple site damage (MSD) has got more attention in ageing structures. Cumulative effects of interacting cracks may significantly degrade the damage tolerance capacity of structures. Cracks caused by MSD are extremely difficult to detect and greatly reduce the residual strength, fatigue life and overall structural integrity of aircraft panels. This paper presents a simple numerical method, which use the principles of fracture mechanics and the computation results, to predict the fatigue crack growth life of MSD structure. Comparing with calculating crack growth life cycle by cycle, this method will save much time. To verify the validity of the proposed method, experiment was conducted and reported with simulation specimen of representative MSD structure with 5 details. The comparison between the calculated a-N curves and the crack growth lives and the test results shows that the prediction result with this fast method is acceptable. A discussion was carried out by numerical analysis; in with typical MSD structures with different initial crack length were adopted. Crack interaction effect was found obviously, but it occurred mainly in the last part of the crack growth lives. The relative size of MSD cracks depends significantly on the distribution of the initial cracks.

Fatigue Crack Growth of Alloy 7050-T7451 Plate in L-S Orientation

Experiments have been conducted to investigate the crack growth characteristics of 7050-T7451 aluminium plate in L-S orientation. Two loading conditions are selected, i.e. constant amplitude and constant stress intensity factor range (ΔK). The effects of ΔK-levels and stress ratios (R) on crack splitting are studied. Test data shows that crack splitting could result in the reverse of crack growth rate trend with the increasing R ratio at high ΔK-level. The appearance of crack splitting depends on both ΔK and R.

Oxidation Study of APS Thermal Barrier Coatings in Elevated Temperatures

TBCs is a type of multilayer systems, mainly used in the thermal parts of aero engine, acting as the part of heat insulation. The using temperature of parts can be improved because of the being of TBCs. TBCs is one of the most advanced high temperature coatings, and it has many perfectly properties, including the chemical property at high temperature, anti-erode and thermal insulation [1,2]. If TBCs spall from the base, the base will expose in the high temperature, then, rapidly destroy. TBCs generally include three layers, superalloy, bonding layer, insulation layer, and the thermally grown oxide (TGO) between the bonding layer and insulation layer. Justly because of the being of TGO, the TBCs easily failed [3,4]. Although many researchers studied the oxidation of TBCs, the investigation of the relations between oxidation and oxide temperature has not been done by far. So, the work put the emphases on the discussion of APS TBCs’ oxidation property in different temperatures by experiment.

Stochastic Characteristics of Fatigue Crack Propagation for TA15 Titanium Alloy

Crack propagation tests are conducted on TA15 titanium alloy in three stress levels to investigate the stochastic characteristics of FCG. A random variable probability FCG model, base on the Paris’ law, is used to characterize the stochastic performance. Distribution significance test has been done, which shows that the random variable X can be considered reasonably to follow log-normal distribution in all the three stress levels. The probability distribution of crack size at any specified loading cycle and the probability distribution of the random fatigue life at which a given crack size is reached are discussed. Variance analysis indicates that the standard deviations of the log fatigue crack growth rate (FCGR) under the three stress levels do not differ from each other significantly. The scatter of crack initiation life under the lowest stress level is the largest, however, the scatter for crack propagation life shows no significant difference in the three stress levels.

Determination of Creep Crack Growth Threshold by Experiments under Elevated Temperature with Pre-Stressed Specimens

A novel test method is presented in this paper for determination of the creep crack growth threshold. In this method, a wedge is placed in the notch of a standard compact tension (CT) specimen with a pre-crack, which provides an evaluable stress fields characterized with stress intensity factor (K) at the crack tip. Then the specimen is kept in the test temperature for a certain time. The creep crack growth threshold of the material at a given temperature can be obtained by extrapolating the curves of the crack growth rate vs. K in the double logarithmic coordinates. Since it does not need mechanical testing machine and several specimens can be tested simultaneously, the proposed method is economical in both costs and time. Tests on a nickel-based powder metallurgy superalloy FGH97 are conducted using this method at 600°C, 650°C and 750°C, which indicate its feasibility.

Evaluating the Critical Temperature of Creep-Fatigue Interaction a Nickel-Based Powder Metallurgy Superalloy

For the components working in high temperature and enduring fatigue loading, the fatigue fracture properties will be reduced remarkably when the working temperature is higher than the critical temperature of creep-fatigue interaction Tc of the material. In consequence, the damage mechanism from creep-fatigue interaction becomes more complex. A method is presented in this paper to determine the Tc of a nickel-based powder metallurgy superalloy. Pure fatigue crack growth and creep-fatigue crack growth tests were conducted in several different elevated temperatures. The fracture mechanism was investigated via observing the fractographic characteristics using scanning electron microscope (SEM). The test results show that the Tc of this superalloy is a little bit lower than a half of the melting temperature Tm.

The Effect of Stress Amplitude on Multi-Axial High-Cycle Fatigue Failure under Constant Amplitude Loading

Studies about the effect of stress characteristics on multi-axial high-cycle fatigue of metals are still insufficient. Up to now, little work about the effect of different ratio of stress amplitude has been done on multi-axial fatigue under the same equivalent stress. In this paper, the effect of ratio of stress amplitude, under the same Von-Mises equivalent stress is studied from theory and experiment. The results show that the main factor of multi-axial high-cycle fatigue failure is the maximum principal stress. For proportional loading, fatigue life raises when ratio of stress amplitude increase. The variety of fatigue life is not obvious when is larger than a certain value and its value closes to that of pure torsion. For non-proportional loading, when ratio of stress amplitude increases, fatigue life raise at first, then has an inflection point. The value of at the inflection point changes with phase difference and its value is 0.5 while phase angle is 90º. Fatigue life of uniaxial tension was lower than that of pure torsion.

Modified Swift Criteria for Residual Strength of Multiple Site Damage Structure

As more aircrafts reach or exceed their design life, it is becoming very important to research multiple cracks damage, especially the multiple site damage (MSD) in order to re-evaluate their service life and damage tolerance/durability performance. The existing of MSD may remarkably reduce the residual strength of an aerospace structural component than those with a singe lead crack. This study investigated the residual strength of aluminum alloy sheet with MSD through three types of aluminum specimens test. Aluminum panels with bare collinear constant diameter holes were chosen as specimens. After some constant amplitude tension-tension load cycles, the MSD were found in these specimens since there were multiple fatigue cracks emanating from the saw cuts of holes. The residual strength was recorded as the maximum load when every specimen was subjected to monotonically increasing tensile load until failure occurred. In different failure prediction criteria that were often used in engineering in order to evaluate the accuracy of these criteria, Swift criterion (ligament yield) criterion got more accurate prediction results than other criteria. Although Swift criterion was more accurate than some other criteria, its error was still big for some specimens. Two modified approaches were proposed in order to get more accurate and appropriate failure criterion for MSD structure.

Residual Strength Research for Aluminum Alloy Sheet with Multiple Site Damage

This study investigated the residual strength of aluminum alloy sheet with multiple site damage (MSD) through three types of aluminum specimens test. Aluminum panels with bare collinear constant diameter holes were chosen as specimens. And there were saw cuts at both edges of all the holes. After some constant amplitude tension-tension load cycles, the MSD were found in these specimens since there were multiple fatigue cracks emanating from the saw cuts of holes. The residual strength was recorded as the maximum load when every specimen was subjected to monotonically increasing tensile load until failure occurred. The test results were compared with predicted residual strength results by five different failure prediction criteria that were often used in engineering in order to evaluate the accuracy of these criteria. The failure criteria included: fracture criterion, net ligament loss criterion, ligament yield criterion, CTOA/CTOD criterion and average stress criterion. Ligament yield criterion (Swift criterion) and average stress criterion got more accurate prediction results than other criteria.

Stochastic Characteristics of Fatigue Crack Propagation for 2024-T3 Aluminium Alloy in Corrosive Environments

Crack propagation tests were conducted with CCT specimens made by 2024-T3 Aluminum alloy in benign and corrosive environments to investigate the stochastic characteristics of crack growth. A random variable probability crack growth model, base on the modified form of Paris law, was used to characterize the stochastic performance. Distribution significance test has been done, which shows that the random variable X can be considered reasonably to follow log-normal distribution in all the 4 kind of environments. Variance analysis indicates that the scatter in wet air is greater than that in laboratory air significantly. Expressions for the probability distribution of crack size at any given loading cycle and the probability distribution of the random fatigue life at which a given crack size is reached were discussed. The corresponding calculations for the crack length distribution and P-a-N curves with certain reliability were carried out. The comparisons with experimental data indicate the validity of the proposed method.