Experiments And Modeling Of Fatigue And Fracture Of Aluminum Alloys

In this work, understanding the microstructural effects of monotonic and cyclic failure of wrought 7075-T651 and cast A356 aluminum alloys were examined. In particular, the structure-property relations were quantified for the plasticity/damage model and two fatigue crack models. Several types of experiments were employed to adapt an internal state variable plasticity and damage model to the wrought alloy. The damage model was originally developed for cast alloys and thus, the model was modified to account for void nucleation, growth, and coalescence for a wrought alloy. In addition, fatigue experiments were employed to determine structure-property relations for the cast alloy. Based on microstructural analysis of the fracture surfaces, modifications to the microstructurally-based MultiStage fatigue model were implemented. Additionally, experimental fatigue crack results were used to calibrate FASTRAN, a fatigue life prediction code, to small fatigue-crack-growth behavior. Lastly, a set of experiments were employed to explore the damage history effect associated with cast and wrought alloys and to provide motivation for monotonic and fatigue modeling efforts