Crack Growth Simulation in Integrally Stiffened Structures Including Residual Stress Effects from Manufacturing. Part I: Model Overview

This article represents the first part of a two-part article which presents, compares and discusses the different crack growth simulation models which were introduced for fatigue crack growth assessment during the DaToN project. The project was funded by the EC within the 6th framework program and was specifically devoted to investigate innovative manufacturing techniques for metallic structures with special focus on the effects of residual stresses on the fatigue crack growth and residual strength behaviour. Within this first part the different simulation approaches, including the residual stress modelling approaches will be introduced and stress intensity factor results will be presented and compared. Within this context it could be observed that residual stress effects do have a significant influence on the resulting stress intensity factor solution whose magnitude strongly depends on the input parameters (residual stress field input) but also, to certain extent, on the simulation approaches for stress intensity factor determination as well as residual stress modelling. The residual stress effect also plays an important role for the fatigue crack growth simulations which will be presented in detail in the second part including a comparison with fatigue crack growth results from experiments.