Low-cycle fatigue crack initiation life of hull-notched plate considering short crack effect and accumulative plastic damage

When studying the low-cycle fatigue crack initiation life of notched plates, the effects of fatigue short crack and accumulative plastic damage in the vicinity of the notch should be considered. The low-cycle fatigue crack initiation life of notched plates has been revised in the analysis process by considering the short crack initiation and expansion of notch stress concentration area. By determining the accumulative plastic deformation in the vicinity of a notch under low-cycle fatigue loads, a predictive model of low-cycle fatigue crack initiation life was presented for notched plates, and the relative influence factors were quantitatively analyzed. A comparison study verified that the results obtained from the presented calculation model correlate quite well with those from the existing experiments. Some important conclusions were drawn from the study on considering the effects of short crack and accumulative plastic damage. The presented method may be used for predicting the low-cycle fatigue crack initiation life of ship plate.