Numerical simulation of fatigue crack growth for curved cracks emanating from fastener holes in sheets by the MVCCI method

The paper presents the results of a continued study of curved fatigue crack growth in a multiple arbitrarily pre-cracked isotropic sheet under plane stress loading. The predictor-corrector method (PCM) was extended in order to analyse the growth of multiple crack systems in a finite 2D structure. Together with the recently proposed improved mod fled virtual crack closure integral (MVCCI) method we can obtain accurate SIF values also for interacting cracks, and furthermore we can simulate fatigue crack growth of multiple crack systems in plane sheets under proportional mixed mode loading conditions. As a result, the program PCCS-2D is written to run within ANSYS to simulate interacting curved cracks. In order to check the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method several example problems are solved. Especially curved cracks emanating from loaded fastener holes in sheets are analysed.