A numerical and experimental study of crack tip shielding in presence of overloads

The mechanism underlying plasticity-induced shielding of a crack tip under fatigue loading has been already experimentally investigated by means of photoelasticity using a recently-developed mathematical model which considers stress field near the crack tip and along the flanks. Stress intensification factors have also been defined to describe shielding effects on the applied elastic field. In this paper a new application of this model is developed through a numerical simulation of the experimental tests, which were previously performed.The study is aimed to analyze the shielding effect related to constant amplitude cycling loading and a single overload peak, considering numerical simulation. By means of the models developed by XFEM technique, the plastic region is reproduced finding a good agreement with the experimental data, and a systematic procedure is proposed to evaluate the stress intensity factors.A good correspondence is found by comparing the numerical with the experimental parameters, obtained from the mathematical model.