An analysis of fatigue strength of notched components

It is well known that the fatigue limit of the notched components is governed by either the initiation or propagation of a small crack at the root of a notch. Since the elastoplastic behavior and the crack closure effect should be properly taken into consideration, the behavior of such a small crack cannot be characterized solely by linear elastic fracture mechanics. To overcome the difficulty mentioned above, in this study, a novel method is proposed to investigate the notch effect by making use of the McEvily method, which has been widely used for the analysis of small fatigue crack growth. Further, to modify the McEvily method, the plastic zone size of a crack is calculated based on the Dugdale model to incorporate the effect of the plastic yielding near the crack tip. Finally, the predictive capability of the proposed method is demonstrated by comparing our theoretical predictions with the available experimental data.