Analysis of Stable and Catastrophic Crack Growth Under Rising Load

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Abstract
Some metals exhibit slow crack growth prior to instability under rising load. This paper is concerned with an elastic-plastic finite element plane-stress analysis of stable and catastrophic crack growth in a center-cracked panel of a ductile material, subjected to a monotonically increasing applied stress. The stable crack growth phenomenon is modeled by incorporating a local failure criterion in the stress-analysis procedure. An automatic reidealization procedure is developed to refine the finite element mesh at the new crack-tip position before external load is increased. The method is applied to study the crack-growth behavior of geometrically similar panels of different material stress-strain curves, and results are compared with experiment. The effects of some important parameters on crack growth and stability under rising load are discussed.

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