About the effect of plastic dissipation in heat at the crack tip on the stress intensity factor under cyclic loading

Abstract Because of the reverse cyclic plastic zone at the crack tip, there is plastic dissipation in heat at the crack tip under cyclic loading. That creates a heterogeneous temperature field around the crack tip. A thermo-mechanical model is proposed in this paper for evaluating the consequence of this temperature field on the Mode I stress intensity factor. Two cases are studied: (i) the theoretical problem of an infinite plate with a semi-infinite through crack under Mode I cyclic loading, and (ii) a finite specimen with a central through crack. In the first case, the main hypothesis and results are presented from the literature but no heat loss is taken into account. In second case, heat loss by convection is taken into account with a finite element analysis, while an analytical solution exists in the literature for the first case. In both cases, it is assumed that the heat source is located in the reverse cyclic plastic zone. The heat source within the reverse cyclic plastic zone is quantified by experiments on a mild steel under R = 0.1. It is shown that the crack tip is under compression due to thermal stresses coming from the heterogeneous temperature field around the crack tip. The effect of this stress field on the stress intensity factor (its maximum, minimum and its range) is calculated. This paper shows that experiments have to be carried out to determine the heat source within the reverse cyclic plastic zone. This is the key parameter to quantify the effect of dissipation at the crack tip on the stress intensity factor.