Fatigue crack growth simulation of aluminium alloy under spectrum loadings

Fatigue crack growth in structure components, which is subjected to variable amplitude loading, is a very complex subject. Studying of fatigue crack growth rate and fatigue life calculation under spectrum loading is vital in life prediction of engineering structures at higher reliability. The main aim of this paper is to address how to characterize the load sequence effects in fatigue crack propagation under variable amplitude loading. Thus, a fatigue life under various load spectra, which was predicted, based on the Austen, Forman and NASGRO models. The findings were then compared to the similar results using FASTRAN and AFGROW codes. These models are validated with the literature-based fatigue crack growth test data in 2024-T3 Aluminium alloys under various overload, underload, and spectrum loadings. With the consideration of the load cycle interactions, finally, the results show a good agreement in the behaviour with small differences in fatigue life compare to the test data. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.