Numerical Study on the Variability of Plastic CTOD

This paper presents a numerical study on the influence of material parameters and loading variability in the plastic crack tip opening displacement (CTOD) results. For this purpose, AA7050-T6 was selected as reference material and a middle-cracked tension specimen geometry was considered. The studied input parameters were the Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, isotropic and kinematic hardening parameters and the maximum and minimum applied loads. The variability of the input parameters follows a Gaussian distribution. First, screening design-of-experiments were performed to identify the most influential parameters. Two types of screening designs were considered: one-factor-at-a-time and fractional factorial designs. Three analysis criteria were adopted, based on: main effect, index of influence and analysis of variance. Afterwards, metamodels were constructed to establish relationships between the most influential parameters and the plastic crack tip opening displacement (CTOD) range, based on two types of designs: Face-Centered Central Composite Design and Box-Behnken design. Finally, the metamodels were validated, enabling the expeditious evaluation of the variability in the plastic CTOD range; in addition, the variability in the fatigue crack growth rate was also evaluated.