Ductile Crack Propagation Simulation of a Cylinder With a Through-Wall Circumferential Flaw Under Excessive Cyclic Torsion Loading

A lot of applications of elastic plastic FE analysis to flawed structural fracture behaviors of mode I have been investigated. On the other hand the analysis method has not been established for the case of the excessive cyclic torsion loading with mode II or III fracture. The authors tried simulating the fracture behavior of a cylinder-shaped specimen with a through-walled circumferential flaw subjected to excessive monotonic or cyclic loading by using elastic plastic FE analysis. Chaboche constitutive equation of the used FE code Abaqus was applied to estimate the elastic plastic cyclic behavior. As a result in the case of monotonic loading without crack extension, the relation of torque-rotation angle of the experiment was estimated well by the simulation. Also J-integral by the Abaqus’ function agreed with a simplified J-equation using the calculated torque-rotation angle relation. On the other hand under load controlled cyclic loading associated with ductile crack growth, the calculated torque-rotation angle relation did not agree with the experimental one because of high sensitivity of the used stress-strain curve. J-integral from Abaqus code did not increase regardless of the accumulated crack growth and plastic zone. Several simplified ΔJ calculations tried to explain the experimental ductile crack growth and it seemed that da/dN-ΔJ relation follows the Paris’ law. From these examinations an estimation procedure of the structures under excessive cyclic loading was proposed.