Methodology for fatigue crack growth testing under large scale yielding conditions on corner-crack specimens

• Fatigue crack growth testing under small and large scale yielding conditions.
• Methodology for monitoring fatigue crack closure on corner-crack specimens.
• New fracture mechanics solutions for the J-integral and a corner-crack specimen.
• The fracture mechanics solutions for J can be transferred to cyclic loading.
• Unified description of all test results irrespective of the loading conditions.

In this paper results of fatigue crack growth tests performed under both small and large scale yielding conditions on corner-crack specimens are presented for a turbine shaft steel. It can be shown, that the crack opening stress is the main factor influencing the fatigue crack growth rates. In order to account for plasticity effects numerical simulations are performed, which yield solutions for the J-integral. Those solutions are transferred to cyclic loading conditions by using the effective cyclic J-integral. Finally, all crack growth tests can be described within a single scatterband.