Experimental study and BEM analysis of fatigue crack growth in a cracked heterogeneous body

A model for analysing a soft-hard heterogeneous body with a crack in the hard region is presented in this paper. The result of fatigue experiments shows that mechanical heterogeneity affects the rate of propagation of fatigue crack. Meanwhile the results computed by BEM for cracked heterogeneous bodies under cycling loading indicate that the smaller the distance between the crack and the interface of hard and soft regions is, the smaller the amplitude of crack opening displacement, COD and ofJ-integral as well at the same step during the fatigue crack growth will be. The effect of heterogeneity on the rate of fatigue crack propagation is shown by the variation of J. The smaller the distance of the crack to the interface is, the smaller the rate of fatigue crack growth will be.