HBK – Hottinger Bruel & Kjaer, Rotherham, United Kingdom
Halfpenny Andrew
Biography
Dr. Halfpenny has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from University College London (UCL) and a Masters’ in Civil and Structural Engineering. With over 25 years of experience in structural dynamics, vibration, fatigue and fracture, he has introduced many new technologies to the industry including: FE-based vibration fatigue analysis, crack growth simulation and accelerated vibration testing. He holds a European patent for the ‘Damage monitoring tag’ and developed the new vibration standard used for qualifying UK military helicopters. He has worked in consultancy with customers across the UK, Europe, Americas and the Far East, and has written publications on Fatigue, Digital Signal Processing and Structural Health Monitoring. He is a founding member of NAFEMS PSE Certification scheme and sits on the NAFEMS committee for Dynamic Testing.
Conferences
Room |
Date |
Hour |
Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
| Room 8 |
19-11-2025 |
3:30 pm – 4:00 pm |
61 A comprehensive review of Fatigue Crack Growth laws and models |
Conferences Details
61 A comprehensive review of Fatigue Crack Growth laws and models
Fatigue is the most common cause of failure in structures subject to cyclic loading. Fatigue failure is a two-stage phenomenon consisting of a crack initiation stage followed by a propagation stage. Cracks can initiate due to fatigue but also as a result of manufacturing processes and material features such as inclusions or voids. Once a crack is present, if it is subject to a sufficiently high cyclic stress, it will propagate until failure. However, in some instances a crack can propagate into a low-stressed region causing the crack to stall and never propagate to failure. In this case the crack may be acceptable in-service as it might not compromise the durability of the component (damage tolerant approach). Fatigue crack growth refers to the propagation (or non-propagation) of cracks in structures subject to cyclic loading. Fatigue crack growth and damage tolerant analyses use fracture mechanics principles and therefore, the knowledge of pre-existing cracks is necessary. These pre-existing cracks can be detected in components using non-destructive techniques or assumed. From the second half of the 20th century, significant research effort was put in understanding and describing how cracks propagate under cyclic loading, including how to characterise the threshold, propagation and fast fracture regions, both from an experimental and numerical point of view, as well as how to account for mean stress effect and crack retardation. Unfortunately, this research effort is scattered in a multitude of scientific publications. The purpose of this paper is to provide in a single document a comprehensive collection of the most relevant fatigue crack growth laws and models allowing a more effective review and comparison of the available tools and facilitating decision making.