1991 Volume 40 Issue 457 Pages 1317-1323
Fatigue tests were carried out under axial loading by using 2017-T3 Al alloy plate specimens having three defects through thickness to investigate statistically the crack propagation behavior and their coalescence leading to a failure of the specimen. The important findings in the present study are summarized as follows.
There was little difference between the number of cycles to crack coalescence and that to a failure. Based on the distribution characteristics of crack length at an arbitrary number of cycles, probabilistic evaluations were made on the coalescence of fatigue cracks, and the distribution of the numbers of cycles to crack coalescence has been theoretically derived on the basis of crack coalescence probability. The analytical results obtained were in good agreement with the experimental trends.
