Prediction of fatigue regimes in notched components

Fatigue crack growth from notches is described as a two-stage process. Cracks are assumed to initiate in, and their early growth controlled by, the plastic zone due to the notch. Later growth is controlled by the developing crack tip plastic zone which can be described by the elastic stress intensity factor. A simple model is proposed which qualitatively accounts for all observed notch phenomena including non-propagating cracks and size effects. The equation: is shown to quantitatively predict the experimental fatigue failure limit of sharply notched specimens.