Evaluation of fatigue crack growth due to bending on the autofrettaged cylinders with external crack

In this study, fatigue growth of external surface cracks on the autofrettaged cylinders under bending is investigated. Autofrettage is a process in which a thick-walled cylinder subjected to internal pressure with known amount, causing some portions on the inner zone of the cylinder deformed plastically. In this case, removing the pressure causes compressive residual stresses on the inner layers and tensile stresses on the outer wall. The goal is increasing the fatigue durability of the product by inducing residual compressive stresses into materials, but along with this, there are adverse tensile stresses which can decrease the life due to the outer defects. In this paper, the external cracks are in the forms of half-elliptical, semi-elliptical and semi-circle. Samples made by aluminum 2024 alloy. The cylinders were autofrettaged up to 40 and 60 percent. Cracks were located in circumferential direction and normal to cylinder axis. The numerical simulations were performed by finite element method. Experimental data and numerical results were compared. Results show that the number of load cycles to fracture, in the 60% autofrettaged cylinders are smaller than those for 40% and also smaller than the state without autofrettage. Distribution of stress intensity factor along the crack front is symmetric and crack grows in its initial plane which indicating the dominance of the first mode of failure during the crack growth. In all samples, after some steps of the growth, crack front transforms to the semi-elliptical shape until complete fracture.