A unified model of fatigue kinetics based on crack driving force and material resistance

Fatigue in Al-alloys is largely a process of crack growth from pre-existing defects occurring by several different mechanisms, each of which dominates a particular rate-driven segment of fatigue kinetics. These include fatigue void formation through interfacial cracking of secondary particulates, crack extension by brittle micro-fracture (BMF) in near-threshold fatigue, slip driven crack growth in the Paris regime and quasi-static crack extension by the well-known micro-void coalescence (MVC) and the less known fatigue void coalescence (FVC). BMF is mean stress and sequence-sensitive. Mechanism selection for fatigue crack extension in each load cycle occurs on the principle of least resistance to crack driving force represented by ΔK and Kmax. Crack extension will switch to a different failure mechanism given reduced resistance to that mechanism by comparison to the current one. Increasing driving force will thus force a switch from BMF to shear and then onto MVC or FVC in that order, over each rising load half-cycle. Higher growth rates will therefore always be associated with a mix of all these mechanisms.