Author(s)

Y. Hong & Y. Qiao

Abstract

The initiation and the growth of short fatigue cracks present two typical characteristics: collective evolution and stochastic response. In this paper, the method taking into account the balance of crack number density is adopted to investigate the stochastic behaviour of short-crack collective evolution. The results obtained from the analysis of the stochastic equation for Local-Crack- Number-Density (LCND) illustrate the stochastic tendency of crack development. Moreover, the evolution equation of Overall- Crack-Number- Density (OCND) is derived by the analytic procedure of LCND. The result indicates that the stochastic behaviour of OCND is dominated by the fluctuation of local crack-growth-rate. 1 Introduction It has been observed that, the evolution process of short fatigue cracks in

Keywords