On the Stress Intensity Factor of Cracks in Residual Stress Field

The use of weight function technique in fatigue crack growth subjected to external cyclic loading and residual stress field has been questioned by several researchers in that the technique is unable to account for the residual stress redistribution during the crack growth. In this paper a center cracked tension specimen containing residual stresses was analyzed by finite element method. The crack growth was simulated by releasing the nodes ahead of crack tip in stepwise and the stress intensity factors induced by residual stresses at different crack lengths were estimated. The results from the numerical analysis are identical to the weight function solution, which demonstrates that the weight function technique can be used for the fatigue crack growth analysis in residual stress field, unless the residual stress distribution is disturbed by the plastic yield.