Development of a photomicroscope method for in situ damage monitoring under ultrasonic fatigue test

PurposeMechanical issues related to the information and growth of small cracks are considered to play a major role in very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) for metallic materials. Further efforts on better understanding in early stage of a crack are beneficial to estimating and preventing catastrophic damage for a long period service.Design/methodology/approachDependent on the ultrasonic loading system, a novel method of in situ photomicroscope is established to study the crack behaviors in VHCF regime.FindingsThis in situ photomicroscope method provides advantages in combination with fatigue damage monitoring at high magnification, a large number of cycles, and efficiency. Visional investigation with attached image proceeding code proves that the method has high resolution on both size and time, which permits reliable accuracy on small crack growth rate. It is observed that the crack propagation trends slower in the overall small crack stage down to the level of 10–11 m/cycle. Strain analysis relays on a real-time recording which is applied by using digital image correlation. Infrared camera recording indicates the method is also suitable for thermodynamic study while growth of damage.Originality/valueBenefiting from this method, it is more convenient and efficient to study the short crack propagation in VHCF regime.

Localization and Imaging of Micro-Cracks Using Nonlinear Lamb Waves with Imperfect Group-Velocity Matching

Nonlinear Lamb waves have attracted increasing attention for detecting and identifying microstructural changes in structural health monitoring. However, most identification methods that determine the damage locations based on the intersections of the elliptical loci will inevitably cause positioning errors due to the change of the group velocity before and after interaction with the damage. In this work, a method focusing on elliptical rings was proposed for localization and imaging of micro-cracks in a three-dimensional structure using nonlinear Lamb waves with imperfect group-velocity matching. The width of the elliptical rings can be determined by the degree of the group-velocity mismatching of nonlinear S0 modes. The mode pair S0-s0, satisfying approximate group-velocity matching, is mainly introduced by interacting with the micro-crack. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology for damage localization is verified by the experimental testing and numerical simulation. Although the length of the being-tested small crack (about 1 mm) is smaller than the wavelength of the incident fundamental Lamb wave (around 20 mm), it can be well identified and localized using nonlinear Lamb waves. The experimental results show that the proposed method enables more reliable localization of the small crack with the crossover areas, as compared with the intersections based on the ellipse method. Furthermore, a breathing crack not situated in the propagation path can also be well localized by the proposed method in comparison with those by the probability-based diagnostic imaging in the simulation cases.

Characterization of Surface Fatigue Crack Nucleation and Microstructurally Small Crack Growth in High Strength Aluminum Alloys

It is well established that fatigue crack nucleation and small crack growth in high strength aluminum alloys are highly influenced by the surrounding microstructure including grain boundaries, texture, inclusion barriers, among other factors. As such, specific and targeted experimental and computational methods are necessary to accurately capture and predict the discrete behavior of microstructurally small fatigue cracks. In this study, surface fatigue crack nucleation and microstructurally small crack growth in high strength aluminum alloys, commonly used in aerospace applications, are evaluated through a holistic approach encompassing fatigue testing, crack measurement, and computational prediction of crack growth rates. During fatigue testing, crack shapes and growth are quantified using a novel surface replication technique that is applied to investigate crack nucleation, as well as to collect validation data that includes an accurate description of crack shape during crack propagation, a challenging and essential component in predicting crack growth. Computational simulation of fatigue crack growth in non-straight, complex surface crack arrays typically requires high fidelity analysis using computationally expensive methods to account for the mathematical and geometrical complexities inherent in the solution. A dislocation distribution based technique has been previously demonstrated to rapidly and accurately predict the stress intensity factors for through cracks of complex shape. This method was expanded and investigated as an approach for rapidly predicting the crack growth rate of kinked and tortuous surface crack arrays, using the crack configuration and bulk material properties as inputs. To investigate the accuracy and effectiveness of this characterization approach, surface crack growth in AA7075-T7351 was experimentally analyzed and modeled under high cycle and low cycle fatigue conditions. This comprehensive approach was determined to be an expedient and applicable method for characterizing and evaluating the nucleation and crack growth rate of non-planar microstructurally small and short crack configurations.