Chaos caused by fatigue crack growth

The nonlinear dynamic responses including chaotic oscillations caused by a fatigue crack growth are presented. Fatigue tests have been conducted on a novel fatigue-testing rig, where the loading is generated from inertial forces. The nonlinearity is in the form of discontinuous stiffness caused by the opening and closing of a growing crack. Nonlinear dynamic tools such as Poincaré maps and bifurcation diagrams are used to unveil the global dynamics of the system. The results obtained indicate that fatigue crack growth strongly influences the dynamic response of the system leading to chaos.