Author(s)

R. C. Alderliesten & J. J. Homan

Abstract

Fatigue crack growth behaviour of surface cracks in Glare R. C. Alderliesten & J. J. Homan Structures and Materials Laboratory, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands Abstract In Fibre Metal Laminates the cracks due to fatigue loads propagate in the metal layers only, while the fibrefepoxy layers stay intact and bridge the crack, by transferring loads over the crack. A special case of crack propagation in Glare is the crack configuration where only one surface layer contains a crack. Several investigations were performed to understand the (bridging) mechanism of this special case in Glare and to describe it by means of calculation and prediction methods. Tests have been performed under constant amplitude fatigue loading on a variety of Glare laminates and test conditions, in order to obtain the necessary data for calculation method development and validation. This paper gives an overview of the used approaches to describe crack growth behaviour in the

Keywords