Modelling and experimental evaluation of non-linear fatigue crack propagation in a ductile superalloy

Sammanfattning: Fatigue life evaluation is an important part in the design process of an industrial gas turbine. The fatigue life can be divided into crack initiation and crack propagation, and not to address the crack propagation part usually yields a non-conservative and overcomplicated design. Historically a lot of attention has been directed towards the crack initiation, but the crack propagation part in an industrial gas turbine context has not been given the same attention due to limitations in theoretical modelling, lack of test possibilities and that the design requirements have been fulfilled within the initiation life. However, with the need to reduce service down time and to improve performance, the crack propagation life needs to be further accounted for. As an example, cracks that emerge from notches or other stress concentrations grow under non-elastic conditions, which cannot be modelled with linear theories.In this Licentiate of Engineering thesis a non-linear approach is put forward in which the plastic contribution in fatigue crack propagation is addressed and accounted for. The theoretical background is not new, but the finite element implementation done was, to the author knowledge, not available. This numerical post processing tool can calculate the non-linear ΔJ value for an arbitrary 2D-geometry. It was used to produce an expression for a non-linear geometry factor used in a simple expression for estimation of ΔJ in a test evaluation context. Room temperature tests were performed on a single notch specimen, under both displacement and force control. The latter were carried out in order to show the behaviour under small scale yielding conditions, while the displacement controlled testing was to show large scale yielding at the beginning of the tests. It was shown that all the test results could be collected in a Paris law type plot with ΔJ if the crack closure effect is taken into account. Furthermore, a study was performed where both a linear and a non-linear approach are applied on the displacement controlled tests. It was concluded that for the studied test series, the linear fatigue fracture parameter ΔK underestimates the crack growth behaviour if the elasto-plastic stresses from the tests are used, hence yielding non-conservative results.Since this project focuses on non-linear crack propagation at thermo-mechanical conditions a crack length description is put forward, which simplifies and increases the accuracy of crack length measurements in fatigue crack propagation tests. It has also been shown that irrespectively of the crack initiation location in a single edge notch specimen the data fall on one curve, meaning that no care has to be taken regarding this aspect when evaluating crack length with the modified compliance method put forward in Paper III.This Licentiate of Engineering thesis consists of two parts, where Part I gives an introduction to the subject, while Part II consists of three papers.