Axial crack propagation and arrest in a pressurized cylinder: An experimental-numerical analysis

The feasibility of using a previously developed crack-kinking criterion to predict crack arrest at a tear strap in a pressurized fuselage was studied with instrumented axial rupture tests of 21 models of an idealized fuselage. A rapidly propagating axial crack, which was initiated from a precrack, kinked immediately upon extension and propagated diagonally until it turned circumferentially and propagated along the tear straps. An elastodynamic finite element analysis of the rupturing model fuselage yielded the mixed-mode stress intensity factors,KI andKII, and the remote stress component, σOX. This numerical procedure was also used to predict the crack trajectories in full-scale fuselage rupture tests. All numerical results agreed well with their measured counterparts regardless of size.