Computational Mechanics 19 (1997) 527532 Springer-Verlag 1997

A methodology for fatigue crack growth and residual strength prediction

with applications to aircraft fuselages
C.-S. Chen, P. A. Wawrzynek, A. R. Ingraffea

Abstract The FRANC3D/STAGS software system has been

developed to model curvilinear crack growth in aircraft
fuselages. Simulations of fatigue crack growth have been
reported previously (Potyondy et al. 1995). This paper
presents two enhancements to this system. One is the generalization of the representation of cracks that allows the
system to represent realistic damaged structures more accurately. With this capability, parameters that may affect the
trajectory of a fatigue crack are studied. Results are compared with measurements from a full-scale test. The second
enhancement is to model stable tearing for residual strength
prediction. A stable tearing simulation along a crack path
that captures the material nonlinearities inherent at the
crack tip is performed. The CTOA (Crack Tip Opening
Angle) is used as a crack growth criterion to characterize the
fracture process under conditions of general yielding. Residual strength of cracked structures is predicted.

1
Introduction
The FRANC3D (FRacture ANalysis Code for 3D Solids and
Shells) program has been developed for simulating curvilinear crack growth in fuselages (Potyondy et al. 1995). It
supports simulation of both curvilinear discrete crack
propagation in stiffened thin shell structures and nonplanar discrete crack propagation in solid structures. It
can be used to represent the crack geometry in a fuselage,
and to simulate crack interaction with various structural
elements. The stresses and displacements needed to calculate the relevant fracture parameters are provided by the
STAGS (STructural Analysis of General Shells) program
(Brogan et al. 1994). This innovative numerical strategy,
combining the geometric modeling and curvilinear crack

Communicated by P. E. O'Donoghue, M. D. Gilchrist,

K. B. Broberg, 6 January 1997
Chuin-shan Chen, P. A. Wawrzynek, A. R. Ingraffea

Cornell University Fracture Group,

431 Rhodes Hall,
Ithaca, NY 14853, USA

Correspondence to: Chuin-shan Chen

The authors would like to thank Dr. Jim Newman, Dr. Charles
Rankin, Dr. Dave Dawicke, Dr. Richard Young, Prof. Alan
Zehnder, Dr. Mark Viz, and Dr. Bruce Carter for many helpful
discussions. This work was performed with support from the
NASA Langley Aircraft Structural Integrity Program under contract NAG-1-1184.

growth simulation in FRANC3D with the shell nite element analysis of STAGS, allows one to simulate fatigue and
fracture of aircraft structures.
This paper reports on two enhancements to FRANC3D.
One enhancement is the generalization of the representation of cracks along the intersection of two structural elements. The other is the ability to model stable tearing and
the associated material nonlinearities to predict the residual strength of damaged structures.
In a real airplane, it is quite common for cracks to
develop at the intersection of components comprising
built-up structures (e.g. along an edge of a stringer in the
skin of a fuselage panel). Previous limitations in the
FRANC3D program prevented the modeling of cracks at
the intersection accurately, and the cracks were moved
away from these locations (Potyondy et al. 1995). These
limitations have now been removed. In Sect. 2, this new
capability is used to simulate fatigue crack growth in a
fuselage panel that is representative of a generic narrowbody aircraft. Crack trajectories are allowed to grow arbitrarily as a part of the simulation and predicted results
are compared with measurements from a full-scale test.
This study focuses on several parameters that may affect
the prediction of crack trajectories including: the length of
the crack growth increment, the initial crack propagation
angle from the stringer, the structural exibility due to the
initial saw cut in the test, rivets and adhesive, and the
anisotropy of fracture toughness of the fuselage panels.
In ductile materials, slow stable tearing is likely to
precede rapid fracture when yielding is extensive. In the
case of ductile crack extension, plastic deformation takes
place in a nite volume of material surrounding the crack
tip; this is important for the fracture mechanism. A
number of different fracture criteria including crack tip
stress or strain, crack tip opening displacement or angle,
crack tip force, energy release rate, J integral, and the
tearing modulus have been proposed to characterize this
fracture process under conditions of general yielding. Of
these, the crack tip opening angle (CTOA), or the crack tip
opening displacement (CTOD) at a specied distance from
the crack tip, was shown to be suitable for modeling
ductile fracture (Dawicke and Sutton 1993; Dawicke et al.
1993; Newman et al. 1992). Section 3 reports on a stable
tearing simulation along a predened crack path. The
CTOA is used as a crack growth criterion to characterize
the fracture process under conditions of general yielding.
Predicted residual strength is compared with results from
a middle-crack tension (M(T)) test (Dawicke 1996). Preliminary results in predicting the residual strength of
cracked aircraft fuselages are also reported.

527

2
Fatigue crack growth simulation

528

growth trajectories are investigated. Of the possible

parameters, the length of crack growth increment, the
initial propagation angle from the stringer/tear strap, the
inuence of the saw cut in the test, rivets and debonding,
2.1
and anisotropic fracture properties of fuselage panels were
Basic considerations
The mechanics of simulating fatigue crack growth is out- investigated.
lined in the sources mentioned below. The reader is referred to the previous work (Potyondy et al. 1995) for in- 2.2.1
depth discussion of the applicability of each to pressurized Length of crack increment
During the simulation process, the analyst species the
thin shell structures.
amount of crack extension at each crack tip. To investigate
A set of four stress intensity factors (k1 , k2 , K I , K II )
proposed by Hui and Zehnder (1993) is used to account the possible effects on crack trajectories, the simulation
for both the in-plane membrane loading K I ; K II and the was performed again with one half inch crack growth increments. Figure 2 compares the predicted trajectories of
out-of-plane bending loading k1 ; k2 , experienced by a
crack in a fuselage structure. For each crack growth sim- the one half inch growth increments with those of the one
inch increments. There is only slightly better agreement
ulation cycle, the equilibrium state with fully applied
loading is obtained from a geometrically nonlinear shell between the simulated trajectories and the experimental
analysis. Stress intensity factors are computed using the measurements.
modied crack closure integral method (Viz et al. 1995).
The maximum tangential stress theory is used as the crack 2.2.2
Initial propagation angle
growth directional criterion (Erdogan and Sih 1963).
In the numerical model, the initial saw cut is idealized as a
mathematical crack in the skin along the edge of the
2.2
stringer/tear strap. The computed stress intensity factors
Validation problem
A fuselage panel that is representative of a typical narrow- for a crack located in such location may not be accurate
enough to predict a reliable initial propagation angle. A
body aircraft has been modeled. Detailed dimensions,
second analysis was performed with an imposed angle of
structure component idealizations and the hierarchical
modeling strategy are reported by Potyondy et al. (1995). 12 to investigate the effect on crack trajectories. Figure 3
The crack is grown in one inch increments at each crack compares the predicted trajectories between the cases of
tip. The predicted results are compared with a full-scale imposed angle and the original sharper angle. The trajectories with the imposed angle immediately follow the
pressurized panel test (Miller et al. 1992) with an initial
saw cut just above the stringer/tear strap. Figure 1 shows original predicted path after the rst inch of crack growth.
the predicted crack trajectories and measurements of these
quantities from the panel test. For reference, the trajecto- 2.2.3
Influence of saw cut, rivets, and debonding
ries reported in the previous work with an initial crack
0:4500 above the stringer, are also plotted in the gure. The For a fuselage panel, typically the tear straps are bonded
predicted crack trajectories grow away from the stringer/ directly to the skin while the other components are contear strap with a sharp angle and follow a similar path as nected with rivets. In the numerical model, it is assumed
those with an initial crack 0:4500 above the stringer. Since that there is a perfect bond between all structural comthe predicted results do not agree well with experimental ponents along the entire area of overlap. Thus, the fastener
measurements, possible parameters that might affect crack exibility, the debonding between the tear straps and skin,

Fig. 1. Comparison among computed and measured crack trajectories for the validation problem. The circle, triangle, and box
denote the crack tip location from prediction with the initial
crack along the stringer, prediction with the initial crack 0:4500
above the stringer, and experimental measurements, respectively

Fig. 2a,b. Comparison among computed and measured crack

trajectories for the validation problem. The triangle, circle, and
box denote the crack tip location from prediction with a half inch
increment, prediction with a one inch increment and experimental measurements, respectively. a Left side crack; b Detail of
right side crack

In general, crack propagation in anisotropic media is

considerably more complicated than the isotropic case
(Boone et al. 1987). In the present work, a simple extrapolation of the maximum tangential stress theory to
materials with orthotropic toughness proposed by Buczek
and Herakovich (1985) is used. The tangential stress is
normalized with respect to the directional strength of the
material and crack propagation is assumed to be in the
direction of maximum normalized stress, such that:

Fig. 3a,b. Comparison among computed and measured crack

trajectories for the validation problem. The triangle, circle, and
box denote the crack tip location from prediction with the imposed angle, prediction with the original angle and experimental
measurements, respectively. a Left side crack; b Detail of right
side crack


  
rhh KI ; KII
rhh

Max
;
R critical
Rh

at h hc

where Rh is a strength parameter characterizing the

material fracture resistance, rhh is the tangential stress,
and hc is the angle of impending crack propagation. The
fracture resistance is characterized as a function based on
fracture toughness for propagation along T and L directions (Fig. 5). We note that the theory is for fracture
propagation so its applicability to fatigue crack growth is
and the inuence of the initial saw cut are not modeled.
not clear. Figure 5 shows the initial propagation angle
Each of these factors may have signicant effects on the
away from the stringer/tear strap for the orthotropic case,
crack growth simulation and should be studied in the fuwith 20% higher toughness in the T than in the L direction
ture. For this study, it was simply assumed that the vicinity
of propagation. A 16:5 difference from the isotropic case
of the initial crack region in the actual panel is more
is obtained. Predicted crack trajectories considering the
exible than the idealized one; thus, the Young's modulus
orthotropic toughness effects are plotted in Fig. 6. They
of the tear strap and stringer around this region was reagree well with those from the experimental measureduced to a quarter of its original value. The predicted
ments.
crack trajectories are shown in Fig. 4. They agree well with
experimental measurements at the beginning of the
3
propagation, but as the crack grows, the predicted path lies
Stable tearing and residual strength prediction
in an area between that of the original prediction and the
Stable tearing for residual strength prediction requires a
experimental measurements.
consideration of material non-linear behavior and the use
of an appropriate crack extension criterion. In the present
2.2.4
work, elastic-plastic nite element analysis based on inOrthotropic fracture properties
cremental ow theory with a small strain assumption is
Depending on the material's rolling direction, the apparent
used to capture material nonlinearity (Zienkiewicz and
toughness along circumferential and longitudinal direcTaylor 1991), and the CTOA criterion developed by
tions may be different. For 2024-T3 aluminum, the direcNewman et al. (1984, 1988, 1993) is used as the fracture
tion perpendicular to the rolling direction could have a 5
criterion to characterize stable crack growth.
to 20% higher toughness than that of the rolling direction.
The applicability of FRANC3D/STAGS to model stable
For the panel tested, the rolling direction was longitudinal;
tearing for residual strength prediction is demonstrated by
thus, the cracks growing from the initial saw cut are exsimulating the fracture process of the middle crack tension
periencing T-L crack growth.
(M(T)) test. Results of predicted residual strength are
compared with those from the M(T) test measured in
laboratories (Dawicke 1996).

Fig. 4a,b. Comparison among computed and measured crack

trajectories for the validation problem. The triangle, circle, and
box denote the crack tip location from prediction with the softened tear strap and stringer, prediction with the original stiffness
and experimental measurements, respectively. a Left side crack; Fig. 5a,b. The predicted initial propagation angles away from the
b Detail of right side crack
stringer/tear strap for the a isotropic and b orthotropic cases

529

Table 1. Piecewise linear representation of the uniaxial stressstrain curve for 2024-T3 aluminum

530

r (ksi)

50
56.5
62.5
68.5
71.0
71.0

0.00483
0.015
0.040
0.1
0.16
0.2

E = 10350 ksi, t = 0.3

A stable tearing simulation for the residual strength

prediction of a cracked fuselage may be performed on a
predened or arbitrary crack path, but only the former is
reported here. Preliminary studies, including effects of
crack trajectories on residual strength prediction and a
possible tearing preference from the skin into the tear
strap or from the skin along an edge of the tear strap, are
evaluated.

in a vertical direction uniformly, and the applied stresses

are obtained by averaging total forces from all nodes on
edges divided by the area. The nite element mesh model
for the 1200 wide panel and the applied stress vs. half crack
extension are plotted in Fig. 8. The peak stress obtained
from the applied stress-crack extension curve is the residual strength. Results of residual strength prediction for
various panel widths using FRANC3D/STAGS are compared with those of M(T) tests by Dawicke (1996) and are
summarized in Table 2. As the width of the panel increases, the relative difference between experimental
measurements and numerical prediction increases. Similar
behavior was reported by Newman et al. (1992). They have
observed better correlation by including a ``plane strain
core'' at the crack tip. A similar procedure for the present
simulation is under investigation.

3.1
Residual strength prediction: M(T) test
The objective of this study is to verify the methodology of
using shell elements to predict residual strength. The M(T)
test specimen conguration and the simulation model are
shown in Fig. 7. A piecewise linear representation of the
uniaxial stress-strain curve for 2024-T3 aluminum, given
in Table 1, is used. The critical CTOA is 6 degrees measured 0:0400 behind the crack tip. In the numerical simulation, displacements are applied along edges so they move

3.2
Preliminary study: residual strength of aircraft fuselages
In this section, FRANC3D/STAGS is used to predict the
residual strength of a cracked aircraft fuselage. A predened but curvilinear crack path obtained from fatigue
crack growth simulation is used. The crack is then
``closed'' to perform tearing simulation. Thus, we (a) neglect the possible trajectory change due to stable tearing
and assume (b) that the transition from fatigue to tearing
occurs abruptly and (c) that the plasticity history before

Fig. 6. Comparison among computed and measured crack trajectories for the validation problem. The triangle, circle, and box
denote the crack tip location from prediction in the orthotropic
toughness case, prediction in the isotropic toughness case and
experimental measurements, respectively

Fig. 8. Finite element mesh for M(T) test specimen and the
Fig. 7. The M(T) test specimen conguration and the simulation predicted applied stress vs. half crack extension curve (w 1200 ,
2a/w 1=3, h/w 2 , B 0:0900 ; critical CTOA 6 degrees)
model

Table 2. Residual strength prediction of M(T) test by FRANC3D/

STAGS (Critical CTOA 6 degrees)
Width
(w)

Initial crack
(2a)

Experimental
results

Predicted results

1:500
300
1200
2400

0:500
100
400
800

37.3
34.5
31.3
28.4

37.64
34.92
32.60
31.87

ksi
ksi
ksi
ksi

ksi
ksi
ksi
ksi

(+0.9%)
(+1.2%)
(+4.1%)
(+12.2%)

531

the tearing simulation can be ignored (this is most certainly an incorrect assumption). A critical CTOA of 5.1
degrees assumed to be the same along the T and L directions is used in the tearing simulation.

3.2.1
Effects of crack trajectories
To investigate the possible effects of crack trajectories on
residual strength prediction, the following are used: the
crack path as shown in Fig. 6 obtained from fatigue crack
growth that considers orthotropic fracture toughness effects with the initial crack along the stringer/tear strap,
and the crack path with the initial crack 0:4500 above the
stringer (Potyondy et al. 1995). Stable tearing simulation is
performed for the last inch crack growth with a 0:100
tearing increment at each crack tip. Note that the 0:100
crack increments are too large for accurate predictions of
the tearing load, but the purpose here was to investigate
the relative difference of predicted residual strength due to
different predicted crack trajectories. Figure 9 plots the
applied pressure vs. half crack extension curve. A 30%
difference in the residual strength prediction was found.
3.2.2
Preference of crack extension direction
The tearing preference from the skin into the tear strap or
from the skin along an edge of the tear as illustrated in
Fig. 10 is studied. The crack trajectories as shown in Fig. 6
obtained from fatigue crack growth that consider orthotropic fracture toughness effects are used with a self-similar extension to the tear strap under the frame. Tearing is
simulated from skin to tear strap in one case and from

Fig. 9. The applied pressure vs. half crack extension curves and
predicted residual strength for the crack trajectories with the
initial crack lying along the stringer tear strap and the initial
crack of 0:4500 above the stringer

Fig. 10a,b. Tearing preference path. a From skin into the tear
strap; b From skin along the edge of the tear strap

skin along an edge of the tear strap in the other. Figure 11

plots the applied pressure vs. half crack extension curve.
The strength of the cracked fuselage increases substantially
when tearing approaches the tear strap. Since similar
strength is obtained in both cases, no distinct tearing
preference is found.

Fig. 11. The predicted applied pressure

vs. half crack extension curves for
tearing from skin into tear strap and
from skin along the edge of tear strap

532

4
Summary and conclusions
An innovative numerical strategy in simulating fatigue and
fracture of an aircraft fuselage has been developed. The
close coupling of FRANC3D/STAGS, by combining the
geometric modeling and curvilinear crack growth simulation in FRANC3D with the shell nite element analysis of
STAGS, seeks not only to represent and analyze the
problems faithfully but also efciently.
Two enhancements of the FRANC3D/STAGS software
system with respect to fatigue crack growth and stable
tearing simulation are presented. For fatigue crack growth
simulation, a fuselage panel that is representative of a
typical narrow-body aircraft is used. Several parameters
that may affect crack trajectories are investigated. Results
show that the length of the crack growth increment and the
predicted initial propagation angle away from the stringer/
tear strap have no signicant effect on the crack trajectory
prediction, but the inuence of the saw cut, rivets and
debonding and orthotropic fracture properties of panels
do affect the predicted crack path. A detailed modeling of
fastener exibility and adhesive for fuselage panels is
needed in the future to address their effects on the crack
trajectory prediction.
For the tearing simulation, the predicted residual
strength from FRANC3D/STAGS agrees closely with that
from M(T) tests. However, the relative difference between
experimental measurements and the prediction increases
as the width of panels increases. This may be due to the
``plane strain core'' effects and should be investigated in
the future as a tearing simulation guideline for cracked
fuselages. Preliminary studies have shown: (a) crack trajectories could have signicant effects on the residual
strength prediction of cracked fuselages, and (b) no distinct tearing preference was found from the skin into the
tear strap or from the skin along an edge of the tear strap.

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