Method of estimating plastic deformation distributions at the fatigue crack tip based on the solution of linear elasticity theory

In this paper, an experimental study of the strain fields at the fatigue crack tip was carried out. The strain fields were measured by an optical camera based on the digital image using the correlation method. Images were recorded using a Basler acA2440-75uc optical camera with a TC23007 OptoEngineering lens to achieve a spatial resolution of at least 3 µm. Recording frequency was 100 Hz. The possibility of using the solution of the linear singularity problem of elasticity theory to estimate the distribution of plastic strain at the fatigue crack tip was shown. Mechanical tests of uniaxial cyclic deformation with simultaneous registration of the strain field at the crack tip of different lengths were carried out on flat specimens of titanium alloys Ti Grade 2, Ti-1.1Al-0.9Mn, Ti Grade 9. The specimens were loosened by means of a lateral semicircular notch in order to localize the crack. The solution of the problem of a specimen with a notch in the elastic formulation was carried out numerically in the finite element modelling package Comsol Myltiphysics. The peculiarity of the work is the use of the hypothesis of the functional relationship between real deformations and the elastic solution and the value of the secant modulus of the material to estimate the plastic deformation at the crack tip. The size of the zone of intense plastic deformations at the fatigue crack tip for different crack lengths was determined experimentally and numerically. By comparing the calculated and experimental data we showed the possibility of using the proposed dependence to estimate the distribution of the plastic strain field at the crack tip. The results obtained allow the analysis of the irreversible strain fields at the crack tip for mixed mode loading.