Development of Fatigue Crack Healing Technology for Metallic Materials and Its Evaluation

Abstract

Establishment of fatigue crack healing technology for metallic materials is important to improve the safety and life of machinery and structures. Therefore, the authors developed a novel fatigue crack healing technique removing the oxide film on the crack surface by heat treatment and using plasticity induced crack closure generated during fatigue crack growth as a driving force of the healing. It was found that the resistance of the fatigue crack growth after crack healing was larger as the effect of the plasticity induced crack closure was larger.