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Experimental Study on the Fatigue Crack Growth and Overload Effect in Medium Density Polyethylene

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Abstract

The fatigue crack growth behavior of medium-density polyethylene (MDPE) under constant amplitude load was experimented on plate specimens. The effect of additional imposed single overload was also researched. An optimized crack front marking method was developed to obtain the actual crack front shape of polymer materials in fatigue crack growth, which was successfully applied to the studied MDPE. The results showed that the retardation of fatigue crack growth evidently appeared after the tensile overload was applied, which was similar to metallic materials. The passivation of the wedge-shaped plastic zone was a primary cause to crack retardation. The theory based on residual stress was introduced to describe the retardation effect, and the plastic zone size of crack tip was calculated by the Dugdale model. The Wheeler model was successfully used to fit the decreased crack growth rate.

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Data Availability

All data included in this study are available upon request by contact with the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

F :

The load applied to the specimen

F max :

Maximum cycling load

F min :

Minimum cycling load

F OL :

Overload

K I :

The stress intensity factor of mode I crack

R :

Load ratio (Fmin/Fmax)

OLR:

Overload ratio (FOL/Fmax)

a :

The central crack length

l :

The surface crack length

t n :

Different crack growth time

a n :

The length of the long semi-axis of the ellipse at tn

b n :

The length of the short semi-axis of the ellipse at tn

l n :

The surface crack length at tn

K max :

Maximum stress intensity factor in cycling loading

K min :

Minimum stress intensity factor in cycling loading

ΔK :

Stress intensity factor range (Kmax–Kmin)

B :

The thickness of the specimen

t :

The width of the specimen

C :

The Paris’ parameter of R = 0.1

m :

The Paris’ parameter of R = 0.1

C i :

The retardation ratio

r yi :

The plastic zone length calculated with the nominal stress intensity factor

r OL :

The plastic zone length under overload

a i :

The crack length at different crack growth time

a f :

The crack length at the time of retardation disappearing

a OL :

The crack length at the time of overload applied

m′ :

The Wheeler parameter of R = 0.1

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Shanghai Natural Science Fund of China (Grant No. 16ZR1417700) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 11102107).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Yang-fan Qian, Feng-peng Yang, Hou-feng He & He-yang Du

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  1. Yang-fan Qian
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Correspondence to Feng-peng Yang.

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Qian, Yf., Yang, Fp., He, Hf. et al. Experimental Study on the Fatigue Crack Growth and Overload Effect in Medium Density Polyethylene. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 29, 6681–6690 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-020-05128-7

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