Experimental investigation of GH singularity field of the growing crack-tip for different ductile metals

The displacementsu _x ,u _y inx, y directions at growing crack tip of the specimens with double edge cracks for four different alumium alloys and two coppers are measured by using moire method and optical spatial filtering technique. From experimental displacement fields, the displacement singularity fields are obtained and compared with GH theoretical field. Unknown constantsA and _yo in theoretical solution are determined from experimental data. The theoretical singularity field thus compared is given for plane-stress, mode-I, strain-hardening materials. The error in both the experimental and theoretical evaluations is within ± 10%. The experiments show that there exists dominant singularity region around a growing crack-tip. In the experiments, the strain hardening indexn amounts from 3.158 to 14. The shape of this dominant region ranges from butterfly wing to oblate or circular shape. The size and shape of GH dominant region depend on the material property, the specimen geometry and loading type. Inside GH-field, there is a 3-D deformed damage zone, where no GH singularity exists. Very near to the crack-tip, there is a fracture process zone.The project is supported by the National Science Foundation of China.