Fatigue crack growth in anisotropic aluminium sheets — phase-field modelling and experimental validation

Fatigue crack growth is decisive for the design of thin-walled structures such as fuselage shells of air planes. The cold rolling process, used to produce the aluminium sheets this structure is made of, leads to anisotropic mechanical properties. In this contribution, we simulate the fatigue crack g...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of fatigue 2023-11, Vol.176, p.107874, Article 107874
Main Authors: Kalina, Martha, Schöne, Vanessa, Spak, Boris, Paysan, Florian, Breitbarth, Eric, Kästner, Markus
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aluminium sheets
Anisotropy
Fatigue crack growth
Fracture
Phase-field
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Summary:Fatigue crack growth is decisive for the design of thin-walled structures such as fuselage shells of air planes. The cold rolling process, used to produce the aluminium sheets this structure is made of, leads to anisotropic mechanical properties. In this contribution, we simulate the fatigue crack growth with a phase-field model due to its superior ability to model arbitrary crack paths. A fatigue variable based on the Local Strain Approach describes the progressive weakening of the crack resistance. Anisotropy regarding the fracture toughness is included through a structural tensor in the crack surface density. The model is parameterised for an aluminium AA2024-T351 sheet material. Validation with a set of experiments shows that the fitted model can reproduce key characteristics of a growing fatigue crack, including crack path direction and growth rate, considering the rolling direction. •Development of the first phase-field model for fatigue fracture in anisotropic media.•Acquisition of set of anisotropic fracture and cyclic parameters for a AA2024-T351.•Parametrisation of the model for anisotropic aluminium sheet material.•Reproduction of experimentally observed effects in crack path and crack growth rate.
ISSN:0142-1123
1879-3452
DOI:10.1016/j.ijfatigue.2023.107874