Numerical method for predicting the growth of a crack in elastic-plastic material under fatigue loading

In this paper, a numerical method is proposed to predict the growth of a crack in elastic-plastic materials under cyclic loading. The numerical applications have shown that the crack bifurcation angle obtained by the proposed method are in good agreement with the experimental results. However, these bifurcation angles depend on some parameters, such as the ratio of the loading level and the yield stress of the material, the ratio of the mechanical properties of the plastic zone and those of the initial material, the ratio of the stress intensity factors KI and Ks. Some examples have shown the procedure for predicting the crack growth until the failure of the studied structure under a mixed mode fatigue loading.