Determination of Fatigue Crack Plane and Crack Growth Behavior in a Complex Stress Field

When dealing with a part-through-crack in the fillet radius area of a damage tolerant (DT) rotary component that is subject to complex loads, the conventional approach of a two-parameter crack shape is not adequate to describe the asymmetrically growing crack. An advanced three-parameter approach with finite element fracture mechanics (FEFM) analysis is presented in this paper. The obtained crack growth predictions are comparable to the test data, which verifies the validity of the approach.