Investigation of the crack tip stress field in a stainless steel SENT specimen by means of thermoelastic stress analysis

In this work a Thermoelastic Stress Analysis (TSA) setup is implemented to investigates the Thermoelastic and Second Harmonic signals on a fatigue loaded Single Edge Notched Tension (SENT) specimen made of stainless steel AISI 304L. Three load ratios are in particular applied, R=-1, 0, 0.1. The thermoelastic signal is used to evaluate the Stress Intensity Factor via two approaches, the Stanley-Chan linear interpolation method and the over-deterministic least-square fitting (LSF) method using the Williams' series expansion. Regarding least-square fitting, an iterative procedure is proposed to identify the optimal crack tip position in the thermoelastic maps. The SIF and T-Stress are then evaluated considering the influence of the number of terms (up to 20) in the Williams' series function, and the extent and position of the area used for data input. The study also investigates the Second Harmonic signal observed on the wake of the crack with varying load ratio R. An interpretation is proposed that considers the rise of the Second Harmonic as the result of the modulation of the compression loads between the crack flanks, rather than dissipation phenomena. This interpretation enables the possibility to use this parameter to reveal the presence and extent of crack-closure.