Probabilistic life of DA 718 for aircraft engine disks

The micro-mechanisms of crack initiation and propagation identified for DA 718, as well as the competition between initiation site types and locations, cannot be accurately accounted for by current certified methods used to establish aircraft engine disks life,essentially phenomenological. Once identified, these micro-mechanisms have been modelized by mesoscopic models using very few parameters and depending strongly on material mechanical behavior. LCF data scatter was mainly attributed to probabilistic nature of particle presence in a given volume, and probability of fracture at the first LCF cycle. In order to describe these effects and develop a model able to account for LCF scatter by the only means of physical mechanisms description, a global macroscopic and probabilistic model has been proposed. This model can be used as a post-processing routine of a finite element analysis. Confrontation of the global probabilistic model to experimental data gathered on notched samples gives good results, and the proposed method shows more realistic than the standard one on the cases exposed. Contrary to the standard method, it allows in addition to determine the predominant initiation site as a function of loading, material behavior and microstructure inherited from forging process, giving way to possible material and forging route optimisation at the design stage, to fulfill given structural life objectives.