Scaling invariance of fatigue crack growth in gigacycle loading regime

Abstract

The role of the collective behavior of defect ensembles at the crack tip and the laws of fatigue crack propagation in R4 high-strength steel have been studied under conditions of symmetric tension-compression gigacycle loading at 20 kHz. At every stage of the fatigue crack growth, replicas from the sample side surface were taken and studied by the method of three-dimensional relief profilometry (using NewView interferometer profilometer) so as to study the scaling-invariant laws of defect-related structure evolution.