Abstract
Failure of components due to fatigue crack growth is a major problem in industry. The failure process initiates with the presence of small cracks which can cause catostrophic fracture or slow crack growth. When treating a problem of this type, many aspects of the problem should be treated as random variables. The probabilistic finite element method (PFEM) has been shown to be a practical approach for solving problems of this type. In this paper, the fusion of the PFEM and reliability analysis for probabilistic fatigue crack growth is presented. A comprehensive method for determining the probability of fatigue failure for mixed-mode cyclic loading is also presented. The loading is mixed-mode with randomness in the initial and final crack lengths, initial crack angle and position, material properties, crack growth law, crack direction law and loading. The methodology consists of calculating the reliability index via an optimization procedure, which is used to calculate the probability of fatigue failure. Performance of the methodology presented is demonstrated on a classical mode I fatigue problem.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 297-320 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering |
| Volume | 86 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 1991 |
Funding
* The support of NASA Lewis Grant No. NAG 3-822 for this research and the encouragement of Dr. Christos Chamis are gratefully acknowledged. This work was also supported, in part, by the University of South Florida College of Engineering under Grant No. 5-31-2.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computational Mechanics
- Mechanics of Materials
- Mechanical Engineering
- General Physics and Astronomy
- Computer Science Applications