On the mechanistic driving force for short fatigue crack path

The growth of fatigue cracks at the microstructural level is significant for many engineering industries. The multifarious nature of crack propagation at microstructure length scales necessitates the use of advanced modelling techniques to predict fatigue life accurately. A key contributor to this is the path of the crack, which also remains challenging to predict; the maximum slip criterion has been used widely in the literature but is not fully adequate. This paper tests the hypothesis that for short crystallographic cracks, there is some other factor responsible for guiding their extension on a particular plane. With this, using a crystal plasticity finite element modelling framework, two new energy-based methods are developed: a microstructure-sensitive maximum energy release rate criterion, and a maximum normal stored energy density criterion. Results demonstrate, for the two cases studied, both methods offer a significant improvement over the maximum slip criterion when applied to real microstructures. In particular, the maximum normal stored energy method gives closest agreement with experiments, while maximum energy release rate offers new insights into a mechanism for crack bifurcation.