Abstract
A long-overlooked aspect of fatigue crack growth is the potential
contribution to it, of stable crack extension (SCE). Reduction in
specimen size and increase in magnitude of cyclic loading will induce
increased contribution of SCE. SCE as a load interaction effect is
manifest in disproportionately high crack extension due to periodic
overloads. SCE can exceed by more than an order of magnitude estimates
of crack growth from the da/dN versus DK relationship. Simple equations
are proposed to account for SCE in fatigue crack growth. A numerical
analysis is performed to characterize the significance of SCE to
constant amplitude and variable amplitude fatigue crack growth.