Investigating the Effect of Residual Stress on Fatigue Crack Propagation by Modified J-integral and Experimental Method

This paper is introduced new method for predicting of fatigue crack propagation (FCP) in residual stress (RS) field due to welding. If there is stress in the material and is subjected to loading, the effects of loading and RS must be considered simultaneously. For this purpose, stress intensity factor (SIF) in liner elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) approach and J-integral in elastic-plastic fracture mechanics (EPFM) approach are used. The superposition principle based on LEFM is used to consider the RS effects on the cycle ratio and SIF. To achieve more appropriate results based on EPFM, the J-integral is modified to consider the simultaneous effects of RS and external loading. Finally, the FCP equations are modified to consider into calculation the simultaneous influences of RS and cyclic loading. Results from FCP equation based on J-integral are in good agreement with experimental results. The obtained results show that the MLPG method is suitable for calculating the residual stress and the modified J-integral method is the best method for predicting FCP in the RS field caused by welding.