Abstract
By means of local measurement with a laser interferometry technique, the difference in fatigue crack opening evaluation results was revealed when the measurements were conducted at different locations along the length of a fatigue crack in an aluminum alloy. It was found that the crack opening stress increases when the measuring location approaches the crack tip. The experimental study leads to a suggestion that the fatigue crack closure result evaluated with the data obtained from a location far from the crack tip will underestimate the closure effect.
