Determination of the Stress Intensity Factor of an elliptical breathing crack in a rotating shaft

Abstract The failures due to the propagation of fatigue cracks are one of the most frequent problems in rotating machines. Those failures sometimes are catastrophic and are sufficient to provoke the loss of the complete machine with high risks for people and other equipments. When a cracked shaft rotates, the breathing mechanism appears. The crack passes from an open state to a close state with a transition in which a partial opening or closing of the crack is produced. In this work, a new general expression that gives the Stress Intensity Factor (SIF) along the crack front of an elliptical crack in a rotating shaft in terms of the crack depth ratio, the crack aspect ratio, the relative position on the front and the angle of rotation has been developed for linear elastic materials. By the moment, no expressions of the SIF in term of these variables have been found in the literature. To this end, a quasi-static 3D numerical model of a cracked shaft with straight and elliptical cracks subjected to rotary bending using the Finite Element Method (FEM) has been made. To simulate the rotation of the shaft, different angular positions have been considered. The SIF in mode I along the crack front has been calculated for each angular position of the cracked shaft and for different crack geometries. The expression results have been compared with solutions obtained from the literature. It has been found that they are in good agreement. The model has been applied to other crack geometries with good results. The obtained SIF expression allows studying the dynamic behavior of cracked shafts and can be used to analyze the crack propagation.