Effects of Local Strength Variations on Plastic Enclave Development at Crack Tips

摘要

Existing literature dealing with plastic zones near crack tips idealizes materials in the various analyses to have constant and uniform yield strength throughout the region under investigation, at least initially. Such an assumption is not easily defended if one is to consider cracks in real engineering components which may have been forged, cold worked, annealed, or cast during manufacture. This paper establishes analytically and experimentally the influence of one-dimensional yield strength gradients on the size and shape of plastic zones in single edge notched (SEN) 7075-T6 aluminum specimens. (Author)