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Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Volume 91, September 2012, Pages 37-50
P.J. Bouchard, P.J. Budden, P.J. Withers
Materials Engineering, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK
EdF Energy, Barnwood, Gloucester GL4 3RS, UK
School of Materials, University of Manchester, Grosvenor St., Manchester M1 7HS, UK
Abstract
A theoretical basis is presented for determining the significance of a residualstress distribution of arbitrary shape on the crack tip stress intensity factor for a centre-cracked plate as a function of crack length. The Fourier series based approach enables one to increasingly add more spatial definition to the stressfield and thereby determine the level of detailed knowledge of the residualstress required to make a reliable assessment of structural integrity. The approach is applied to examples of measured symmetric distributions of residualstresses in welded plates and used to determine the significance of residualstress length-scales in fracture mechanics analysis.
