Experimental and numerical analysis of fatigue crack propagation path using XFEM

In this work the experimental results of the fatigue crack propagation path on five high strength steel specimens are presented. It was necessary to define the geometry of the test specimens and to implement a procedure to perform such tests, since no standards for the evaluation of the fatigue crack propagation path exist. The numerical simulation was developed in ANSYS Mechanical APDL environment using XFEM technology. Three criteria to determine the propagation direction were implemented: the Maximum Tangential Stress criterion (MTS), the Maximum Energy Release Rate criterion (MERR) and the Minimum Strain Energy Density criterion (SED). The three implemented criteria yield practically identical results, reaching a coefficient of determination R2 equal to 0.997 with respect to the experimental results, indicating that a strong correspondence between the experimental and numerical results exist.