A methodology for studying fatigue crack propagation under spectrum loading: Application to rail steels

A testing procedure is applied to investigate the fatigue behavior of the detail fracture, in rail steel, under Mode I train stress spectrum. The results show that fatigue crack under spectrum loading depends on a “dynamic” accumulation of damage. This term is related to the load sequence in the spectrum and the gradient of the elastic stress intensity factor. It is theoretically very difficult to quantify this term. The rationale underlying the testing procedure is such that this dynamic term effect is implicitly included in the experimental results. The detail fracture was modelled by the penny-shaped crack geometry. This model has proved, in this study, to be satisfactory for simulating the fatigue growth of the detail fracture.