A State-Space Model of Fatigue Crack Growth

This paper proposes a nonlinear dynamic model of fatigue crack growth in the state-space setting based on the crack closure concept under cyclic stress excitation of variable amplitude and random loading. The model state variables are the crack length and the crack opening stress. The state-space model is capable of capturing the effects of stress overload and underload on crack retardation and acceleration, and the model predictions are in fair agreement with experimental data on the 7075-T6 aluminum alloy. Furthermore, the state-space model recursively computes the crack opening stress via a simple functional relationship and does not require a stacked array of peaks and valleys of stress history for its execution; therefore, savings in both computation time and memory requirement are significant. As such, the state space model is suitable for real-time damage monitoring and control in operating machinery.

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