Effect of single tensile overload on fatigue crack growth behavior of CP-Ti at negative load ratio

Abstact In present study, the fatigue crack growth (FCG) behavior of commercial pure titanium (CP-Ti) at negative load ratio with a single tensile overload was investigated through the combination of experiment and finite element method (FEM). The influence of load ratio and overload ratio was considered to investigate the overload retardation effect of FCG with compact-tensile-shear (CTS) specimens. Changes of the fatigue crack growth rate (FCGR) and crack opening force before and after overload were obtained experimentally under different loading conditions. The mechanical behaviors of stress–strain distribution and evolution of plastic zone size ahead of crack tip were explored by FEM for revealing the mechanism of overload at negative load ratios. The results demonstrate that retardation effect of FCG increases with overload ratio, and decreases with load ratio. The retardation effect of overload occurs after a transient acceleration of FCGR. The excessive residual compressive stress induced within the unloading stage of overload cycle ahead of crack tip, causes a shielding effect, which is one of the main factors of overload retardation effect. The difference of plastic strain at crack tip before and after overload makes the monotonic plastic zone (MPZ) and reverse plastic zone (RPZ) compete with each other, resulting in an increase of residual plastic strain, which hinders the crack propagation. At negative load ratios, the overload retardation effect will be weakened by the compressive load because of the decreasing residual plastic strain.