Effect of micro-cavities on different plastic zones at the fatigue crack tip of a compact tension specimen

Knowledge of cyclic plastic deformation response at the fatigue crack tip is crucial to understand the nature of cyclic damage acting on the crack tip. Interaction between crack and defect is equally important to understand the cyclic damage progression at crack tip; however isotropic hardening model was adopted in all existing literatures. Isotropic hardening model is suitable to model only the monotonic plastic zone and unable to model the cyclic/reverse plastic zone. Kinematic hardening model is suitable to model the key cyclic plastic deformation responses like Bauschinger effect, ratcheting, and mean stress relaxation. A non-linear kinematic hardening (Chaboche) model is used in this present investigation to represent the material’s cyclic stress–strain response accurately.Effect of micro-cavity positions (angle and distance from crack tip) and sizes on plastic zones near a crack tip is investigated in this study by two dimensional plane strain finite element model of a compact tension specimen. It is observed that the size and shape of the monotonic and cyclic plastic zones are affected by position and size of the micro-cavity. During asymmetric loading condition, the ratcheting strain accumulation direction is also affected by the position of micro-cavity.