Experimental study on fatigue cracking in pre-corroded aluminum alloy 2024-T4 via digital image correlation

Abstract

The fatigue cracking behavior in pre-corroded AA2024-T4 associated with three different levels of maximum stresses and stress ratios via three-dimensional digital image correlation (3D-DIC) was investigated. The spatial-temporal characteristic of crack initiation and propagation was visually displayed through strain field evolution, while the fracture morphology of determined key damage regions was further examined. Experimental results show that localized corrosion penetrated in the edges of specimens promotes fatigue crack initiation and affects crack nucleation location, accompanied with hydrogen embrittlement. Identified crack orientations (range 60°-68° from the loading direction) reveal that the early growth of fatigue crack can be described by KⅠ/KⅡ-mixed mode. Four typical failure modes (single crack fracture, multi-crack coalescence, multi-crack competition and multi-crack parallel growth) are observed and discussed.

Keywords

• 2424-t4 aluminum alloy
• pre-corrosion
• fatigue
• digital image correlation
• fractographic analysis