Effects of residual stresses on fatigue crack growth behavior of structural materials: Analytical corrections

Fatigue crack growth data developed to characterize a material can be significantly biased by the presence of bulk residual stresses introduced during material processing and subsequent fabrication of test samples. Residual stresses influence fatigue crack growth behavior and change the measured material response to dynamic loading. Correction to experimental data generated in the presence of residual stresses is necessary to produce accurate fatigue crack growth data for modeling and life prediction. This study proposes an analytical technique to correct fatigue crack growth data acquired in the presence of residual stresses. The technique was calibrated with multiple structural materials and multiple stress ratios, and found to produce good agreement between corrected data generated in residual stresses and data generated in minimal residual stresses.