Analytical calculation of the stress intensity factor in a surface cracked plate submitted to thermal fatigue loading

A stainless steel specimen with a pre-existing surface notch is exposed to a convective medium of cyclic temperature. The history of stress intensity factor of the cracked body for different crack lengths is obtained by a closed-form integration of the stress field, using Duhamel’s theory with principle of superposition and appropriate weight functions. The obtained results are compared with numerical simulations performed with ABAQUS and they appear to be in very good agreement. The stress intensity factor history shows that fatigue behavior does not depend only on temperature amplitude ΔT=T_max-T_min, quenching rate, and duration of thermal shock but also on heating rate and duration.