The evaluation of multiple surface crack growth is of practical importance in assessing the fatigue life of structural components. Authors have been conducting the experimental investigation on the growth behavior of multiple surface cracks in order to provide an appropriate fatigue life evaluation procedure.
The evaluation procedure, in which the influence of the front free surface and crack interaction are considered, was already proposed in the previous paper and the fatigue behaviors of straight pipes with multiple surface cracks in the inner surface were also compared with the analytically predicted behavior.
Subsequently to the straight pipe test, bend pipes with surface cracks in the inner surface were tested. In this test, the growth behavior of multiple surface cracks was investigated under cyclic in-plane bending.
In this paper, the result of bend pipe test is presented and the applicability of the proposed evaluation procedure is discussed.
