New unified laws in fatigue: From the Wohler's to the Paris' regime

Generalizations and unification of the celebrated Paris' and Wohler's laws for fatigue crack propagation are derived by applying the recently developed quantized (or finite) fracture mechanics. In particular, three generalized Paris', Wohler's or unified laws are proposed and compared, demonstrating their applicability for predicting the life time of structures containing from small (the Wohler's regime) to large (the Paris' regime) propagating fatigue cracks. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.