Influence of the non-singular stress on the crack extension and fatigue life

The complete elasticity stress field at a crack tip region can be presented by the sum of the singular stress and several non-singular stress terms according to the Williams asymptotic expansion theory. The non-singular stress has a non-negligible influence on the prediction of the crack extension direction and crack growth rate under the fatigue loading. A novel method combining the boundary element method and the singularity characteristic analysis is proposed here to evaluate the complete stress field at a crack tip region. In this new method, any non-singular stress term in the Williams series expansion can be evaluated according to the computational accuracy requirement. Then, a modified Paris law is introduced to predict the crack propagation under the mixed-mode loading for exploring the influence of the non-singular stress on the fatigue life duration. By comparing with the existed experimental results, the predicted crack fatigue life when the non-singular stress is taken into consideration is more accurate than the predicted ones only considering the singular stress.

► BEM is combined by characteristic analysis to calculate the singular stress field.
► A new method is proposed to evaluate the full stress field at crack tip region.
► Effect of non-singular stress on the propagation direction of the fatigue crack is analyzed.
► The influence of non-singular stress on the fatigue crack life is evaluated.