Environmental Crack Growth Behavior Affected by Thickness/Geometry Constraint

This article gives a short review on the effects of thickness/constraint and environment on crack growth behavior under cyclic and static loadings. Fatigue crack growth data taken from the literature, corresponding to different environments, ranging from vacuum to air and NaCl solution for a number of alloys and different specimens geometries are presented and analyzed. Reported results indicate that for relatively inert material/environment systems, there is a weak thickness/constraint effect on fatigue crack growth behavior. On the other hand, for corrosive material/environment systems, there is a significant thickness/constraint effect on crack growth rate behavior under both cyclic and static loadings. Some implications related to crack growth modeling are suggested.