e-ISSN (O): 2348-4470

Scientific Journal of Impact Factor (SJIF): 4.72

p-ISSN (P): 2348-6406

International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research

Development
Volume 4, Issue 1, January -2017

Low temperature fatigue crack growth life prediction of SA312 type 304L steel by
using genetic programming
J. R. Mohanty

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur, 768018, India

AbstractIn the present wok fatigue crack growth tests were performed under interspersed mode-I overload on SA312 type
304L(N) steel. The overloads with an overload ratio of 2 were given at 0, 30, 45, 60, and 75 C at a loading rate of 7
KN/min after the crack had grown to a/w ratio of 0.4. The crack growth tests were continued in mode-I at a frequency of 5 Hz
and load ratio (R) of 0.1 till fracture. From the fatigue tests it has been observed that the crack growth rate decreases as the
overload temperature decreases. The experimental data generated were subsequently used to formulate the genetic
programming (GP) model to predict the fatigue crack growth rates and subsequently the fatigue life of 304L steel. It was
found that the proposed model predicts the fatigue life with reasonable accuracy having + 7.16% deviation from
experimental results.

KeywordsGenetic programming; fatigue crack growth; Fatigue life; Low temperature overload.

I. INTRODUCTION

Engineering structures/components are frequently subjected to cyclic/fatigue loading during their service life. Fatigue loading
may be in the form of constant amplitude loading or variable amplitude loadings depending on the loading situation.
Sometimes load excursions may take place in terms of spike or band over / under loads. It has been observed that overload
has beneficial effect on fatigue crack growth as it retards the growing fatigue crack thereby increasing the residual life of
components. These overloads are sometime affected by various factors such as material properties, operating temperature,
working environments etc. Aircrafts, ships, off-shore structures, oil pipe lines etc. frequently experience such load
interactions in presence of low temperature.

Till now several investigators have studied the effect of spike overload on fatigue crack growth [1-4] and observed
that it retards a growing fatigue crack. However, no literature has been found on fatigue crack growth study under spike
overload in presence of low temperature. Zambrow and Fontana [5] have studied the effect of working temperature on fatigue
life and found that fatigue life of magnesium and aluminum alloys and also some stainless steels increase with lowering the
temperature due to increase in fatigue strength. Further, it has been observed that [6] fatigue life of most FCC materials
increase with decrease in temperature. As far as spike overload at low temperature is concerned almost no work has been
done to verify its effect on fatigue crack growth. In the present study, the effect of mode-I fatigue crack growth under
interspersed low temperature spike overload at various temperatures such as 0C, 30C, 45C, 60C, and 75C on
austenitic stainless steel, SA312 type 304L(N) has been studied. It has been observed that a growing fatigue crack retards as
the temperature decreases. Further, genetic programming technique (GP) has been applied to predict the fatigue life under
such loading situations. The result shows that the GP model successfully predicts the fatigue life of 304L steel under the
above loading conditions with reasonably accuracy.

II. EXPERIMENTATION

Austenitic stainless steel, SA312 type 304L (N) was used as test material in the present investigation. The chemical
composition and tensile properties of the material are given in table 1 and 2 respectively. The compact tension (CT) specimen
was designed as per the requirements of ASTM E647-05 [7]. The thickness of the CT specimen was 15 mm. All other
dimensions were maintained following standard ASTM E647. The machined notch was put in circumferential direction with
respect to plate axis and was named as LT orientation. The LT orientation means loading is in longitudinal (L) direction and
crack growth is in transverse (T) direction with respect to axis of the plate. The CT specimen with its dimensions is shown in
figure 1.

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 International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development (IJAERD)
Volume 4, Issue 1, January -2017, e-ISSN: 2348 - 4470, print-ISSN: 2348-6406

Table 1. Chemical compositions of SA312 type 304L (N) steel (wt%)

C Mn P S Si Cr Ni N Fe
0.021 0.79 0.004 0.003 0.33 18.26 8.45 0.10 Bal.

Table 2. Mechanical properties of SA312 type 304L (N) steel

Tensile strength Yield strength Elongation

(ut ), MPa (ys), MPa
528.00 269.00 64.2 %

Figure 1. Compact tension (CT) specimen geometry

The pre-cracking of the specimens was carried out as per the requirements of ASTM E647 [7] on servo-hydraulic
Instron-8502 machine under cyclic load control condition in air at room temperature. The loading frequency was 5 Hz and
the load ratio (R) was kept as 0.1. The ratio of crack length (a) to width (w) was nearly 0.3 after pre-cracking. After pre-
cracking, the test specimens were subjected to constant load test (i.e. progressive increase in K with crack extension) up to
a/w ratio of 0.4 and subsequently subjected to single spike overload cycle at a loading rate of 7 KN/min. The specimens were
then subjected to mode-I overloads at an overload ratio of 2 ( Rol K ol K mB ax = 2) maintaining different temperatures of 0,
30, 45, 60, and 75 C where,K mB ax is the maximum stress intensity factor range for the base line test. During overloading
the specimens are kept in liquid nitrogen chamber to maintain the required low temperature. The cooling chamber consisted
of two inlet ports in lower end and two outlet ports in upper end connected by blind holes as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2. Cooling Chamber

A gap of 4 mm was maintained on either sides of the specimen in order to avoid direct physical contact with cooling
chamber walls. Temperature was measured with a sixteen channel RTD indicator with a temperature range of 120 C to 400
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 International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development (IJAERD)
Volume 4, Issue 1, January -2017, e-ISSN: 2348 - 4470, print-ISSN: 2348-6406

C. Then, the fatigue crack growth test was continued in mode-I. The crack growth was monitored with the help of a COD
gauge mounted on the face of the machined notch.

III. CRACK GROWTH RATE DETERMINATION

In all most all fatigue crack growth tests, the raw laboratory data of crack lengths (a) and number of cycles (N) usually
contain much scatter. In the present investigation also, the a~N data at each low temperature overload case contains
approximately 400 data sets of crack lengths and number of cycles which contain scatter. The determination of fatigue crack
growth rate (da/dN) from those raw data is certainly a tedious task because of large amount of scatter. Out of several
techniques proposed for data smoothening, the exponential equation method [8] has been proved beneficial as the nature of
fatigue crack growth is exponentially increasing in nature. Hence, the a~N data sets at each low temperature overload have
been smoothened by following the exponential method technique and the superimposed a~N curves have been plotted in
figure 3.

Figure 3. Superimposed a ~ N curves at different low temperature overload

From the smoothened a~N data, the crack growth rates (da/dN) are calculated directly by using the following equation.
da

a j ai (1)
dN N j N i
The superimposed da/dN K plots in log scale for different low temperature cases have been presented in figure 4.

Fig. 4 Superimposed da/dN K at different low temperature overload

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 International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development (IJAERD)
Volume 4, Issue 1, January -2017, e-ISSN: 2348 - 4470, print-ISSN: 2348-6406

IV. GP: A THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Genetic programming is one of the techniques from evolutionary algorithm family. It is based on the Darwinian
principle of reproduction and survival of the fittest, similar to the biological genetic operations such as crossover and
mutation. It automatically creates computer program which enables a computer to solve complex problems [9].

Background of genetic programming is that it starts with an initial population (0-generation) of randomly generated
computer programs of models composed of primitive functions and terminals. Each such program in the population is
allowed to run over a number of different fitness cases so that its fitness is measured as a sum or an average over a variety
of representative different situations. The performance of each model in the population is evaluated by simulating the
corresponding model and calculating some fitness measures like Mean Square (MSE), Mean Relative Error (MRE) and so
on. It defines the quality of the model with respect to the experimental data. A new population of model (offspring) is created
by using certain selection schemes such as proportional selection, tournament selection, rank based selection etc. and
evolutionary operators like crossover and mutation based on Darwinian principle of reproduction and survival of the fittest.

After performing the genetic operations on the current population, the new population of offspring replaces the old
population. Then the fitness measure is operated on each individual of the new population and the process is repeated over
many generations until the algorithm converges at a near-optimum for the problem model.

V. APPLICATION OF GP FOR CRACK GROWTH RATE MODELING

In the context of current work, the fatigue crack growth rate (da/dN) obtained by applying exponential model along with
their crack driving forces i.e. maximum stress intensity factor (Kmax), and stress intensity factor range (K) for each low
temperature overload cases (i.e. 0o, 30o, 45o, 60o and 75o) were used as input/output parameters for GP model
formulation. Here, the two crack driving forces i.e. Kmax and K were chosen as two input variables whereas fatigue crack
growth rate (da/dN) was chosen as one output variable. The training data set for GP model consisted of 357 data points of
input/output variables of each low temperature overload cases for 0o, 30o, 60o and 75o containing total of 1428 data
points. Similarly, 357 data points of input/output variables combination for 45o low temperature overload case left for
testing the model.

For the application of GP method the GP software tool of RML Technologies, Inc, Discipulus TM [10] was used. The
training file containing the input/output variables of four low temperature overload cases was fed to the GP software tool and
fitness function was calculated using that training file. During the training phase the GP tool established several relations by
non-linear stochastic regression analysis in the form of computer programs between the input and output variables i.e. output
= f(input). For the present case the relation is:
da f K , K max (2)
dN

Using an iterative process the parameters of the established relations were adjusted in order to minimize the error
between targeted output and selected program outputs. The selected program (the best fitted one according to the criterion of
minimizing the error between the targeted output and the selected program output in the training data set) was ready and
stored for testing. Parameters of the GP models are presented in table 3.

Table 3. Parameters of GP model for the alloy

P1 Population size 1200
P2 Number of generations Between 100 to 8000
P3 Function set -, *, power
P4 Probability of reproduction 0.1
P5 Probability of crossover 0.9
P6 Maximum depth of initial random organisms 4
P7 Maximum permissible depth organisms after crossover 10

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 International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development (IJAERD)
Volume 4, Issue 1, January -2017, e-ISSN: 2348 - 4470, print-ISSN: 2348-6406

VI. Result and discussion

In the present study, genetic programming was applied on the training data sets for modeling fatigue crack growth
rates. The data containing in the training file were used for learning by applying the fitness function. Subsequently, the new
inputs of the test data set (i.e. for 45oC) were fed to the trained GP model to predict the corresponding predicted outputs.
The overall performances of both sets were evaluated by the correlation coefficient (R) and mean squared error (MSE) given
by:
m

da
dN experimental da dN experimental da dN predicted da dN predicted
(3)
R i 1

2 2

da
dN experimental da dN experimental da dN predicted da dN predicted

da dN predicted
m
da
dN experimental
MSE i 1 (4)
n
Where, da dN experimental and da dN predicted are the experimental and predicted crack growth rates,
da dN experimental and da dN predicted are their corresponding mean values and n is the number of observations.
The statistical performance of the GP model were compared to the experimental data for training and testing sets
and presented in table 4.
Table 4. Statistical results of GP for training and testing
Set MSE Corr. Coff. (R)
Train 1.9637 0.9956
Test 2.3587 0.9879

From the above table it has been observed that the GP model has trained efficiently with high correlation (R =
0.9956) and relatively low error (MSE = 1.9637) values. Comparing the prediction results of GP model with that of
experimental findings for the testing sets (Figure 5) demonstrates a high generalization capacity of the proposed model (R =
0. 9879) and relatively low error (MSE = 2.3587).

Figure 5. Modeling ability of genetic programming for the test set

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 International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development (IJAERD)
Volume 4, Issue 1, January -2017, e-ISSN: 2348 - 4470, print-ISSN: 2348-6406

All these findings show a successful performance of the GP model for estimating fatigue crack growth rates in both
training and testing stages. The crack growth rate (da/dN) obtained from the model at overload of 45oC temperature has
been plotted with respect to stress intensity factor range (K) in figure 6 for 304L steel.

Figure 6. Comparison of predicted (GP) and experimental da/dN K curves

The numbers of cycles were calculated from predicted and experimental results in the excel sheet (Figure 7) as per
the following equation:
ai 1 ai
N i 1 Ni (3)
da
dN

Figure 7. Comparison of predicted (GP) and experimental a N curves

From the a~N plot it is observed that the post overload fatigue life (at 45o) steel from GP model is 128235 cycles
with an error of + 7.16% in comparison to its experimental value which is 119666 cycles. The predicted result shows that the
GP model slightly overestimates the fatigue life under low temperature overload condition but quite reasonable as far as
prediction of fatigue crack growth life is concerned.

VII. CONCLUSION

The current research work presents a novel approach for the formulation of fatigue crack growth rates and
subsequently the fatigue life of 304L steel under low temperature overload condition using GP. The proposed GP model is
empirical formulation based on experimental result collected from fatigue crack growth tests. The model shows very good
agreement with the experimental findings having + 7.16% deviation. This work proves that the genetic programming
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 International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development (IJAERD)
Volume 4, Issue 1, January -2017, e-ISSN: 2348 - 4470, print-ISSN: 2348-6406

technique can successfully be applied to low temperature overload fatigue loadings by substantially reducing the time
consuming and costly fatigue tests.

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