Numerical Determination of Crack Opening and Closure Stress Intensity Factors

The present work shows the numerical determination of fatigue crack opening and closure stress intensity factors of a C(T) specimen under variable amplitude loading using a finite element method. A half compact tension C(T) specimen, assuming plane stress constraint was used by finite element method covering the effects in two-dimensional (2D) small scale yielding models of fatigue crack growth under modified wind turbine standard spectrum loading WISPER. The crack propagation of the finite element model was based on release nodes in the minimum loads to minimize convergence problems. To understand the crack propagation processes under variable amplitude loading, retardations models are observed.