Crack growth life estimating for MSD panel

The problem of multiple site damage (MSD) has got more attention in ageing structures. Cumulative effects of interacting cracks may significantly degrade the damage tolerance capacity of structures. Cracks caused by MSD are extremely difficult to detect and greatly reduce the residual strength, fatigue life and overall structural integrity of aircraft panels. This paper presents a simple numerical method, which use the principles of fracture mechanics and the computation results, to predict the fatigue crack growth life of MSD structure. Comparing with calculating crack growth life cycle by cycle, this method will save much time. To verify the validity of the proposed method, experiment was conducted and reported with simulation specimen of representative MSD structure with 5 details. The comparison between the calculated a-N curves and the crack growth lives and the test results shows that the prediction result with this fast method is acceptable. A discussion was carried out by numerical analysis; in with typical MSD structures with different initial crack length were adopted. Crack interaction effect was found obviously, but it occurred mainly in the last part of the crack growth lives. The relative size of MSD cracks depends significantly on the distribution of the initial cracks.