Fatigue crack growth in bearing steel under cyclic mode II plus static biaxial compression

Mode II fatigue crack growth under reversed shear and static biaxial compression was investigated in two bearing steels. Many aborted branches, quasi-orthogonal to the main crack, were observed along the crack face. The compressive stress parallel to the main crack hindered the growth of these branches and favored coplanar mode II crack growth. The crack face sliding displacement profiles measured by DIC were used to derive Delta KII,eff, at the main crack tip, using elastic-plastic FE simulations with crack face friction, by an inverse method. Frictioncorrected crack growth kinetics were obtained for mode II crack growth in both steels.

Automated summary

In this study, mode II fatigue crack growth under reversed shear and static biaxial compression was investigated in two bearing steels. The presence of aborted branches and the influence of compressive stress parallel to the main crack on crack growth were observed.