2008 Volume 2 Issue 5 Pages 675-684
Local approach to fracture based on continuum damage mechanics and finite element method is a powerful method to estimate fatigue strength, which can reduce computing time and cost for the analysis of fatigue crack initiation and propagation. In the present study, this approach has been applied to the analysis of the behaviors of ring-shaped cracks in stainless steel pipes under thermal cyclic loading. The obtained solutions have been compared with the experimental results to discuss the accuracy of uncoupled, locally-coupled and fully-coupled approaches. A new technique to remove the mesh-dependence of the solutions has been proposed and its validity has been discussed through numerical studies on the low-cycle fatigue crack propagation.
