International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 80 (2003) 111120

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpvp

A simulation of fatigue crack propagation in a welded

T-joint using 3D boundary element method
Zhihai Xianga, Seng Tjhen Lieb, Bo Wanga, Zhangzhi Cena,*
a
Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, Peoples Republic of China
b
School of Civil and Structural Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, Singapore 639798
Received 13 December 2000; revised 21 November 2002; accepted 17 January 2003

Abstract
A general procedure to investigate the fatigue propagation process of a 3D surface crack based on multi-region Boundary Element
Method is detailed in this paper. The mesh can be automatically regenerated as the crack propagates. A new formula for estimating the
effective stress intensity factor is used to calculate the crack extension. The maximum principal stress criterion is then employed to
predict the crack growth direction. Comparison between numerical and experimental results of a welded T-joint shows that the proposed
procedure is reliable.
q 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: 3D fatigue surface crack; Crack propagation; T-joint; Boundary element method

1. Introduction
The simulation of fatigue crack propagation in flawed
components plays an important role in structural safety
assessment. Most research work [1 3] has been carried
out using the finite element method. However, this
approach is limited, in practice, to some simple problems
due to the difficulty of mesh generation. With the
important features of high calculation accuracy and the
reduction of the model dimension, boundary element
method (BEM) requires only a relatively coarse surface
mesh. This substantially speeds up the initial data
preparation time and makes the re-meshing strategy
much easier than other numerical methods. Furthermore,
with its ability to model high stress gradients accurately
and efficiently, BEM has naturally become a popular
approach in this field [4].
Ingraffea, Blandford and Ligget [5] first attempted to
automatically simulate mixed-mode crack growth for 2D
problems with multi-region BEM. Then Grestle [6]
extended this method to 3D problems. Mi and Aliabadi
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 86-10-627-85454; fax: 86-10-627-
70349.
E-mail address: demczz@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn (Z. Cen).
0308-0161/03/$ - see front matter q 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0308-0161(03)00022-X
[7 9], Cisilino and Aliabadi [10], Wilde and Aliabadi [11]
presented the application of the Dual Boundary Element
Method (DBEM) to simulate the propagation of 3D
mixed-mode cracks.
Irrespective of whether the multi-region BEM or DBEM
is used, two essential factors should be carefully considered
for the successful simulation of 3D crack growth. The first
factor relates to the criteria for the rate and direction of
crack growth. For crack growth rate, Paris Law [12] must
be extended to the mixed-mode case, usually by replacing
the Mode I stress intensity factor range DKI with an
effective stress intensity factor range DKeff : For crack
growth direction, the maximum principal stress criterion [6,
14] and the minimum strain energy density criterion [7,8,15]
are commonly used. However, it was reported [1] that the
difference between these two criteria is negligible.
The second factor is the generation of the initial mesh and
the re-meshing strategy. These will be thoroughly discussed
in this paper.
Another important aspect in the crack development
procedure is the treatment of the corner regions near the
intersection points between the crack front and the free
surface [16]. This was ignored in most of the previous
work. In this paper, it is treated by an extrapolation
method.
112 Z. Xiang et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 80 (2003) 111120

Finally, the strategies proposed in this paper are verified

by a simulation of the fatigue crack growth in a welded
T-joint. The performances of three fracture criteria are
illustrated by comparison between the numerical results and
the experimental data.

2. Fatigue crack growth criteria

The Paris Law [12] is expressed as

da
cDKI m 1
dN
where a is the crack length, N is the number of
fatigue loading cycles. The two constants c and m are Fig. 1. Local coordinate system at the crack tip.
material parameters. DKI is the Mode I stress intensity
factor range. For extension to the mixed-mode case, it is
replaced by DKeff : To the authors knowledge, When using Eq. (2), DKIeff in Eq. (5) is taken as
the following formulae were proposed for evaluating DKeff DKI ; when using Eq. (3), DKIeff DKI lDKIII l;
DKeff in the 3D case. with Eq. (4),
Tanaka [13] derived:
!1=4 s
4
4 4 8DKIII 2
DKeff DKI 8DKII 2 KIII
12n KIeff KI2
12n
Writing DKIeff DKI blDKIII l; Grestle [6] proposed
DKeff DKI blDKIII l2 2DKII2 1=2 3 and DKIeff Max KIeff 2 Min KIeff :

where b is an empirical factor and is taken as 1 in this paper. The above three fracture criteria are summarized in
It is noted [1,22] that as the crack propagates, the Table 1.
percentage contributions of Mode II and Mode III
decrease rapidly compared to Mode I, and the total
energy to drive the crack growth is influenced by the ratio 3. Mesh generation and re-meshing
of DKII and DKIII to DKI : Accordingly, Lie et al. [21]
proposed that In this paper, the multi-region BEM is used to
( simulate crack propagation in a welded T-joint specimen
DKeff aDKI [17]. As Fig. 2(a) shows, the make-up of the specimen
4 includes two attachments fillet-welded onto a plate.
a 1 AeBr r 2 C C

where
Table 1
DKII2 DKIII
2
=1 2 n
r 2
; List of fracture criteria
DKI
Criterion DKeff DKIeff
A 676:51; B 21010:91 and C 3:31 1024 :
1 DKeff DKI4 8DKII4 DKIeff DKI
For simplicity and without loss of accuracy, the
4
8DKIII =1 2 n 1=4
maximum principal stress criterion is used to determine
the crack growth direction in this paper. Following this
2 DKeff DKI lDKIII l2 DKIeff DKI lDKIII l
criterion, the crack growth direction from one crack front
point is predicted in the local coordinate system (Fig. 1) by 2DKII2 1=2

2 s
3 ( s
 DKeff aDKI 2
u0 1 4 DKIeff DKIeff 2 3 KIII
tan 2 8 5 a 1 AeBr r 2 C C
KIeff KI2
12n
2 4 DKII DKII
,
DKIeff MaxKIeff
22DKII
p 5 2 MinKIeff
DKIeff DKIeff 2 8DKII 2
 Z. Xiang et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 80 (2003) 111120 113

Fig. 2. Dimensions and boundary element mesh of the T-joint specimen: (a) specimen dimensions; (b) boundary element mesh on the crack face; (c) details of
the weld toe.
114 Z. Xiang et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 80 (2003) 111120

Fig. 3. Fatigue crack shape development.

3.1. Initial mesh generation
The whole structure is divided into triangular and
quadrilateral isoparametric elements with 4 8 variable-
number nodes. The asymptotic behaviours of the displace-
ments near the crack front can be correctly obtained using
quarter-point elements [9,18 21] and transition elements
[18 21]. From these displacements, the mode I, II and III
stress intensity factors KI ; KII and KIII can be evaluated
accordingly [7 9].
A difficult task is the mesh generation for the surface
crack, especially when the surface crack is in mixed mode
and the crack front is not regular in shape. A typical BEM
mesh is shown in Fig. 2(b) for one side of the crack face,
which is slightly twisted and the crack front is pseudo-semi-
elliptical. Following Ref. [21], the assumptions and steps
are taken as follows:
Step 1 Assume the shape of the two crack corners are two
elliptical surfaces.
Step 2 Use a linear interpolation method to obtain the
intersection line L (Fig. 2(b) and (c)) between the
crack face and the free surface, according to
experimental points on that line.
Step 3 Calculate the intersection points of the line L and
the two elliptical surfaces to estimate the positions
of the two crack corner points.
Step 4 Use the spline to interpolate the middle part of the
crack front with experimental points.
Step 5 Construct the crack face with experimental points
and calculated interpolation points along the crack
front and the line L; by using ordinary eight-node
boundary elements.
Step 6 Generate quarter-point elements [9,18 21] along
the two sides of the crack front. Local coordinates

Fig. 4. Crack cross-section profiles.

 Z. Xiang et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 80 (2003) 111120 115

of corner nodes of each element along the crack
front are calculated at the same time, except for the
two nodes located at the place where the crack front
intersects the free surface. Then generate transition
elements [18 21] just behind the two rows of
quarter-point elements.
Step 7 Generate the rest of the elements. Note that the
z-coordinate of the nodes on the ligament is
determined by the average value of the z-coordi-
nates of the nodes on the crack face. This makes
the artificial boundary between two sub-regions
unique.
In a typical mesh for this specimen (Fig. 2), there are
2214 and 1974 degrees of freedom for sub-region I and
sub-region II, respectively.

Fig. 5. Comparison of crack cross-section profiles: (a) at probe 2; (b) at probe 3; (c) at probe 4; (d) at probe 5; (e) at probe 6; (f) at probe 7.
116 Z. Xiang et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 80 (2003) 111120

Fig. 5 (continued )

3.2. Re-meshing strategy intensity factors [9,18 21] and DKeff for corner
nodes of each element along the crack front, except
To simulate crack propagation, the following steps are for the two nodes located at the place where the
taken: crack front intersects the free surface.
Step 2 Limit the maximum crack extension Da to a certain
Step 1 Use the multi-region BEM program to obtain the value (0.4 mm is adopted in the current work), and
displacements of the specimen. Calculate the stress calculate the increment of fatigue loading cycles
 Z. Xiang et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 80 (2003) 111120 117

Table 2
Numerical and experimental results of crack depth

Probe no. Cycles Measured crack Numerical results

depth (mm)
Criterion 1 Criterion 2 Criterion 3

Depth (mm) Error (%) Depth (mm) Error (%) Depth (mm) Error (%)

2 2,625,734 1.3 1.3 0.0 1.3 0.0 1.3 0.0

2,631,720 1.4 1.3 21.9 1.4 21.3 1.4 2.8
2,637,726 1.5 1.4 26.4 1.5 24.1 1.6 3.4
2,643,732 1.7 1.5 28.9 1.6 24.8 1.8 7.2
2,649,738 1.9 1.6 213.8 1.7 28.0 2.0 9.3
2,653,742 2.1 1.7 219.3 1.8 212.6 2.3 8.6
2,657,746 2.3 1.7 225.2 1.9 217.7 2.5 7.0
2,661,743 2.5 1.8 228.5 2.0 219.7 2.7 9.3
2,665,747 2.8 1.8 235.6 2.1 226.4 3.0 5.3

3 2,625,734 4.1 4.1 0.0 4.1 0.0 4.1 0.0

2,631,720 4.3 4.3 21.1 4.3 20.8 4.4 2.0
2,637,726 4.5 4.4 22.4 4.4 21.8 4.7 4.6
2,643,732 4.7 4.6 22.1 4.6 21.1 5.1 9.5
2,649,738 4.9 4.7 24.3 4.8 23.1 5.5 12.0
2,653,742 5.1 4.8 25.5 4.9 24.1 5.8 14.3
2,657,746 5.3 4.9 26.6 5.0 25.0 6.2 17.0
2,661,743 5.5 5.1 28.2 5.2 26.5 6.6 19.2
2,665,747 5.8 5.2 210.5 5.3 28.7 7.0 20.6
4 2,625,734 5.7 5.7 0.0 5.7 0.0 5.7 0.0
2,631,720 6.0 5.9 22.7 5.9 22.3 6.0 20.8
2,637,726 6.2 6.0 22.5 6.1 21.6 6.3 2.0
2,643,732 6.3 6.2 22.5 6.2 21.3 6.6 4.6
2,649,738 6.6 6.3 24.5 6.4 22.9 7.0 5.4
2,653,742 6.9 6.4 26.1 6.6 24.3 7.3 6.0
2,657,746 6.9 6.6 25.5 6.7 23.5 7.6 9.3
2,661,743 7.2 6.7 26.6 6.8 24.5 7.9 10.8
2,665,747 7.4 6.8 27.6 7.0 25.3 8.3 12.9
5 2,625,734 6.1 6.1 0.0 6.1 0.0 6.1 0.0
2,631,720 6.4 6.4 21.5 6.3 21.5 6.4 1.1
2,637,726 6.6 6.4 22.0 6.4 21.9 6.8 3.5
2,643,732 6.8 6.6 23.9 6.6 23.7 7.2 5.8
2,649,738 6.9 6.7 22.5 6.8 22.1 7.7 11.5
2,653,742 7.2 6.9 24.3 6.9 23.8 8.0 11.6
2,657,746 7.3 7.0 24.3 7.0 23.7 8.3 13.8
2,661,743 7.6 7.1 26.4 7.1 25.8 8.6 13.4
2,665,747 7.8 7.2 27.0 7.3 26.4 8.9 15.0
6 2,625,734 5.1 5.1 0.0 5.1 0.0 5.1 0.0
2,631,720 5.3 5.2 21.3 5.2 21.1 5.3 0.9
2,637,726 5.5 5.3 23.6 5.4 23.3 5.6 1.0
2,643,732 5.8 5.9 24.9 5.5 24.5 5.9 2.1
2,649,738 6.1 5.6 27.6 5.7 27.0 6.2 2.4
2,653,742 6.3 5.7 29.0 5.8 28.3 6.6 3.8
2,657,746 6.5 5.9 29.7 5.9 28.9 6.9 6.5
2,661,743 6.7 6.0 211.2 6.0 210.5 7.3 8.1
2,665,747 7.0 6.1 212.3 6.2 211.5 7.7 10.3
7 2,625,734 2.3 2.3 0.0 2.3 0.0 2.3 0.0
2,631,720 2.5 2.4 24.4 2.4 23.7 2.5 0.9
2,637,726 2.9 2.5 214.4 2.5 213.4 2.8 23.3
2,643,732 3.1 2.6 216.3 2.7 214.9 3.1 0.7
2,649,738 3.4 2.7 218.9 2.8 217.3 3.5 3.3
2,653,742 3.7 2.8 222.3 2.9 220.6 3.8 2.8
2,657,746 3.9 2.9 223.9 3.0 222.1 4.0 4.7
2,661,743 4.3 3.0 228.0 3.1 226.2 4.4 3.2
2,665,747 4.3 3.2 227.4 3.2 225.6 4.7 8.6
118 Z. Xiang et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 80 (2003) 111120

DN from the actual crack cross-section profiles (Fig. 4). Thus, the
actual 3D shape of the crack surface is detailed. In this
Da
cDKeff m 6 test, the plastic zone is very small, and there is no crack
DN
closure because the applied stess ratio R 0: Therefore,
for each corner node along the crack front, and an elastic algorithm is sufficient to simulate the crack
determine the minimum DN: Then recalculate Da growth. Following the strategies described in Section 3,
for each corner node from Eq. (6) by using the the crack propagation is simulated using the fracture
minimum DN: criteria one to three (Table 1). Because the tolerance of
Step 3 Calculate the crack growth direction u0 in the local the test measurement is 0.1 mm, we do not have high
coordinate system for each corner node along the degree of confidence on the data measured during
crack front by using Eq. (5).
Step 4 Extend each corner node along the crack front to
new position according to Da and u0 :
Step 5 Assume the shape of the two crack corners as two
elliptical surfaces. Calculate the intersection points
of the line L and the two elliptical surfaces to
estimate the new positions of the two crack corner
points.
Step 6 Use the spline to interpolate the middle part of the
crack front with new coordinates of the corner
nodes.
Step 7 Reconstruct the crack face according to the new
crack front points and points sampled from the old
crack face, using the same eight-node boundary
elements.
Step 8 Without changing the topology of the old multi-
region BEM mesh, regenerate the new mesh and
recalculate the local coordinates of each corner
node, except for the two nodes located at the place
where the crack front intersects the free surface.
Step 9 Go to Step 1 for the next crack increment, or stop
the simulation when all the incremental steps are
completed.

4. Numerical results

The T-joint, simulated in this paper, was made of

structural steel BS4360 grade 43, for which c and m in
Paris Law are equal to 1.834 10213 and 3.0, prespect-
ively; for Da=DN in mm/cycle and DK in MPa m: In the
test, the specimen was subjected to an axial sinusoidal
constant amplitude (200 kN) loading of 7 Hz with stress
ratio R 0 until failure. Owing to the severe stress
concentration, fatigue crack growth always initiated at the
weld toe. An Alternating Current Potential Drop (ACPD)
technique was used to monitor the development of the 3D
fatigue crack in the expected crack location. By measuring
the depth at fixed points along the crack front, and by
choosing suitable inspection intervals, it was possible to
follow the crack growth from initiation to through wall
penetration. The fatigue crack development shape was
recorded at every 2000 cycles, and this was obtained by
using eight probes spaced equally at 10 mm apart as
shown in Fig. 2(c) and Fig. 3. Finally, the plate was sliced
through the thickness at each of the probe positions to get Fig. 6. Re-meshing process of the surface crack.
 Z. Xiang et al. / International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 80 (2003) 111120
Fig. 7. Crack front propagation of the surface crack.
the initial phase of the crack propagation. Therefore, the
simulation starts from cycle 2,625,734 when the crack
propagation is stable.
The comparison between the numerical results and the
experimental data is shown in Fig. 5 and Table 2. Fig. 5
reveals that no matter which criterion is used, the numerical
simulation can approximately follow the crack curvature.
Criterion three behaves better at probe 2 (Fig. 5(a)). For the
crack growth rate, criterion three gives a more conservative
evaluation than the other two criteria. This can also
be observed from Table 2, which shows that after eight
iteration steps, the maximum errors of crack length
calculated by criterion one to criterion three are 2 35.6,
2 26.4 and 20.6%, respectively.
The re-meshing process and the crack propagation results
are shown in Figs. 6 and 7. From these results, it is observed
that as the crack propagates, the crack front tends to become
an ellipse, and Mode I becomes more dominant than
Modes II and III.
5. Conclusions
Based on the multi-region BEM, a general procedure
to simulate the propagation of a 3D mixed-mode fatigue
surface crack is presented. Steps for generating the initial
BEM mesh and the automatic re-meshing strategy are
detailed. This automatic re-meshing algorithm retains
the topology of the original mesh. Thus, the computing
time for each crack increment step is constant.
119
Crack corner nodes are indirectly estimated to circum-
vent the treatment of the different singularity of the crack
tip. For the simulation of a welded T-joint, numerical
results from three fatigue crack growth criteria are
compared. The calculated crack depths generally agree
with the experimental ones. The maximum principal
stress criterion works quite well in the simulation. As the
crack propagates, the crack front tends to be an
ellipse, and Mode I becomes dominant compared to
Mode II and III.
Acknowledgements
This project is partly supported by National Nature
Science Foundation of China, Failure Mechanics Labora-
tory in Tsinghua University (Open Laboratory in Chinese
Ministry of Education), and Basic Research Foundation
in Tsinghua University. The experimental test is
supported by the Applied Research Grant under No.
RG32/95 at the Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore.
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