Fatigue Crack Growth Under Residual Stresses Around Holes

Compressive residual stresses induced by tensile overloads, compressive under loads, or by a cold-expansion process in specimens containing a circular hole and their influence on subsequent fatigue crack growth in aluminum alloys are studied. The finite element method is used to calculate residual stresses. The superposition method, which uses crack-tip stress intensity factors for cases involving remote loading and residual stresses, is used to calculate crack growth life for three kinds of tests from the literature: (1) fatigue of a circular hole specimen after an overload or under load, (2) single crack growing from a circular hole after a severe tensile overload, and (3) single crack growing from a circular hole after cold-working, reaming and notching. All specimens were subjected to subsequent constant amplitude loading. The superposition method worked fairly well for most cases, but tended to over predict fatigue life for small cracks and for cracks growing under residual stresses, which produce compressive (maximum and minimum) stress intensity factors