Ravichandran K.S., Murakami Y., Ritchie R.O. Small Fatigue Cracks: Mechanics, Mechanisms and Applications Proceedings of the Third Engineering Foundation International Conference

Turtle Bay Hilton, Oahu, Hawaii, December 6-11: Elsevier, 1998. — 511 p. — (volume 1)This book represents the proceedings of the Third Engineering Foundation Conference on Small Fatigue Cracks, held under the chairmanship of K. S. Ravichandran (University of Utah), R. O. Ritchie (University of California, Berkeley) and Y. Murakami (Kyushu University) during December 6-11, 1998, at the Turtle Bay Hilton, Oahu, Hawaii. The first two conferences were organized by M. E. Fine and R. O. Ritchie at Asilomar, California, in January 1980, and by R. O. Ritchie and J. Lankford in Santa Barbara, California, in January 1986.Since it was first brought to the attention of the scientific and engineering community by S. Pearson some 25 years ago in his paper in 1975 published in the Journal of Engineering Fracture Mechanics, the problem of small fatigue cracks has remained an important topic in fatigue research and a critical factor in design and life prediction ever since, particularly as ignorance of the problem can result in severe overestimates of the damage-tolerant life of a structure or component. However, in the 13 years since the last Engineering Foundation Small Fatigue Crack Conference, in some respects the problem has come into even greater prominence, primarily because of (i) the need for a better understanding of the small-crack phenomenon including the relevant mechanics and mechanisms (ii) the Aging Aircraft Initiative, where the residual strength and remaining life of many sections of the fuselage of older aircraft is compromised by the presence of many small defects (multi-site damage), (iii) the High-Cycle Fatigue Initiative, where the failure of blades and disks in aircraft gas-turbine engines results from the rapid propagation of small cracks, often initiated at fretting damage, (iv) an increasing emphasis on durability, based on the statistical modeling of small flaw populations, and finally (v) the potential use of advanced materials, specifically ceramics and intermetallics, as structural components, where due to their highly restricted growth-rate curves, design must be based on the concept of a small-crack threshold.