Life Prediction for Bridged Fatigue Cracks

One of the more promising classes of composites touted for high temperature applications, and certainly the most available, is that of relatively brittle matrices, either ceramic or intermetallic, reinforced by strong, aligned, continuous fibers. Under cyclic loading in the fiber direction, these materials develop matrix cracks that often run perpendicular to the fibers, while the fibers remain intact in the crack wake, supplying bridging tractions across the fracture surfaces. The bridging tractions shield the crack tip from the applied load, dramatically reducing the crack velocity from that expected in an unreinforced material subjected to the same value, {Delta}K{sub a}, of the cyclic applied stress intensity factor. An important issue in reliability is the prediction of the growth rates of the bridged cracks. The growth rates of matrix fatigue cracks bridged by sliding fibers are now commonly predicted by models based on the micromechanics of frictional interfaces. However, there exist many reasons, both theoretical and experimental, for suspecting that the most popular micromechanical models are probably wrong in detail in the context of fatigue cracks. Furthermore, a review of crack growth data reveals that the validity of the micromechanics-based predictive model has never been tested and may never be tested. Inmore » this paper, two alternative approaches are suggested to the engineering problem of predicting the growth rates of bridged cracks without explicit recourse to micromechanics. Instead, it is shown that the material properties required to analyze bridging effects can be deduced directly from crack growth data. Some experiments are proposed to test the validity of the proposals.« less