Fatigue fracture in ductile materials, e. g. metals, is caused by cyclic plasticity. Especially regarding the high numbers of load cycles, plastic material models resolving the full loading path are computationally very demanding. Herein, a model with particularly small computational effort is presented. It provides a macroscopic, phenomenological description of fatigue fracture by combining the phase-field method for brittle fracture with a classic durability concept. A local lifetime variable is obtained, which degrades the fracture resistance progressively. By deriving the stress-strain path from cyclic material characteristics, only one increment per load cycle is needed at maximum. The model allows to describe fatigue crack initiation, propagation and residual fracture and can reproduce Paris behaviour. arXiv:1903.06465v3 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci] 23 Oct 2019 Recently, several propositions to extend the phase-field method to fatigue [16,17,18,19,20] have been published. Representatively for the range of different approaches, two models which are able to reproduce Paris behaviour shall be highlighted here: Carrara et al. [19] introduce a phase-field model for fatigue fracture in brittle materials. The basic idea of their approach is that due to repetitive loading the crack resistance decreases, allowing cracks to evolve even far below the static crack resistance. The fracture toughness is modified depending on a measure of locally accumulated elastic strain energy density. Mesgarnejad et al. [20] follow a similar approach, but link the lowering of the fracture toughness also to the phase-field, localising the degradation to the vicinity of the crack tip.Although the authors use different approaches, they are not yet overcoming one key challenge inherent to fatigue crack initiation and propagation: The immense computational effort related to the high number of load cycles. This issue is addressed in the present paper. In particular, we introduce an efficient phase-field model of fatigue fracture in ductile materials, such as metals. Analogously to [19], it is based on the reduction of the critical fracture energy, but uses a different local fatigue measure. In contrast to brittle materials, fatigue crack propagation in ductile materials is caused by cyclic plastic deformations. The straightforward way to treat the problem with an elasto-plastic material model is numerically expensive. Therefore, a different approach is chosen. With the help of the LSA, a local lifetime variable is introduced, accounting for cumulative elasto-plastic deformations. Since the stress-strain path within a load cycle is derived from material curves from cyclic experiments, the explicit simulation of each load cycle would be redundant and can therefore be avoided, saving computational costs. In other words, instead of introducing a ductile phasefield model, an elastic, brittle phase-field formulation which considers the elasto-plastic origins of fatigue is presented. As cracks are described on a macroscopic scale, microscopic effects are...
For the fatigue life of thin-walled components, not only fatigue crack initiation, but also crack growth is decisive. The phase-field method for fracture is a powerful tool to simulate arbitrary crack phenomena. Recently, it has been applied to fatigue fracture. Those models pose an alternative to classical fracture-mechanical approaches for fatigue life estimation. In the first part of this paper, the parameters of a phase-field fatigue model are calibrated and its predictions are compared to results of fatigue crack growth experiments of aluminium sheet material. In the second part, compressive residual stresses are introduced into the components with the help of laser shock peening. It is shown that those residual stresses influence the crack growth rate by retarding and accelerating the crack. In order to study these fatigue mechanisms numerically, a simple strategy to incorporate residual stresses in the phase-field fatigue model is presented and tested with experiments. The study shows that the approach can reproduce the effects of the residual stresses on the crack growth rate.
Fatigue loads and fatigue failure come along with high numbers of load cycles. This makes the simulation of fatigue fracture computationally very demanding, if each load cycle is simulated comprehensively with its loading and unloading phase. We present a numerically efficient method for the simulation of fatigue fracture, which avoids resolving the loading path and instead requires only one increment per load cycle at most.We combine the phase-field method for brittle fracture with a classic fatigue concept for lifetime calculation of components, which is applied to the material point here. A local lifetime variable is obtained, which we use to modify the material resistance incrementally in order to consider the progressive weakening of the material. Since we make use of an elastoplastic revaluation technique, a linear-elastic material model is sufficient in the simulations. Furthermore, the phase-field method allows to describe fatigue crack initiation as well as propagation.In this contribution we describe the method's framework including the mentioned lifetime concept, followed by a proposal for a simulation scheme. Finally, results -for now limited to the one-dimensional case and constant load amplitudes -are discussed.
Fatigue loads come along with high numbers of load cycles which makes the simulation of fatigue fracture computationally very demanding. We present a numerically efficient method which avoids resolving the loading path and instead requires only one increment per load cycle at most. We combine the phase-field method for fracture with a classic fatigue concept. A local lifetime variable is obtained, which we use to modify the material resistance incrementally in order to consider the progressive weakening of the material. Focussing on ductile material behaviour, we make use of an elasto-plastic revaluation technique instead of a full plastic material model. The model allows to describe fatigue crack initiation as well as propagation and reproduces Paris behaviour.
The prediction of fracture in thin-walled structures is decisive for a wide range of applications. Modeling methods such as the phase-field method usually consider cracks to be constant over the thickness which, especially in load cases involving bending, is an imperfect approximation. In this contribution, fracture phenomena along the thickness direction of structural elements (plates or shells) are addressed with a phase-field modeling approach. For this purpose, a new, so called "mixed-dimensional" model is introduced, which combines structural elements representing the displacement field in the two-dimensional shell midsurface with continuum elements describing a crack phase-field in the three-dimensional solid space. The proposed model uses two separate finite element discretizations, where the transfer of variables between the coupled twoand three-dimensional fields is performed at the integration points which in turn need to have corresponding geometric locations. The governing equations of the proposed mixed-dimensional model are deduced in a consistent manner from a total energy functional with them also being compared to existing standard models. The resulting model has the advantage of a reduced computational effort due to the structural elements while still being able to accurately model arbitrary through-thickness crack evolutions as well as partly along the thickness broken shells due to the continuum elements. Amongst others, the higher accuracy as well as the numerical efficiency of the proposed model are tested and validated by comparing simulation results of the new model to those obtained by standard models using numerous representative examples.
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