Crack Paths 2009

the crack fronts). In particular the A D A P C R A C Kre3sultDs, which are based on a rather

coarse mesh, could be improved through a refined crack front meshing. But here this

could not be achieved automatically, due to the complex intersection geometry between

the cracks and the notch. More pronounced this difference can be seen in the KII and

KIII diagrams of Fig. 7b due to the other scaling. In Fig. 8, F E M(by A D A P C R A C K 3 D )

and D B E MSIFs along the crack front are shown, after a first increment with a

maximumcrack advance of respectively amaxFEM=1 m mand amaxDBEM=0.7 mm.

Figure 6. Comparison of experimentally obtained

andsimulatedcracks.

Fig. 7a. D B E Mand F E MSIF’s [MPa*mm0.5] along the two initial crack fronts.

C O N C L U S I O N S

In this paper some results of computational 3D fatigue crack growth simulations have

been presented. The computational results are found to be in good agreement between

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