Circular Shaft

This example demonstrates the effect of mixed mode loading on a crack in a circular shaft. This analysis is typical of many industrial applications. The initial crack is a shallow but straight through crack at the centre of a test specimen. The full uncracked mesh is shown in Figure 1.

The component is loaded by constant amplitude cyclic tension and tosion. This generates a non-planar crack growth surface - the crack skews and twists as it grows through the section to try to achieve a mode I configuration at the crack front. Figure 2, 3 and 4 show animation of the crack growth.