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A mesoscopic approach to subcritical fatigue crack growth

We investigate a model for fatigue crack growth in which damage accumulation is assumed to follow a power law of the local stress amplitude, a form which can be generically justified on the grounds of the approximately self-similar aspect of microcrack distributions. Our aim is to determine the relation between model ingredients and the Paris exponent governing subcritical crack-growth dynamics at the macroscopic scale, starting from a single small notch propagating along a fixed line. By a series of analytical and numerical calculations, we show that, in the absence of disorder, there is a critical damage-accumulation exponent $γ$, namely $γ_c=2$, separating two distinct regimes of behavior for the Paris exponent $m$. For $γ>γ_c$, the Paris exponent is shown to assume the value $m=γ$, a result which proves robust against the separate introduction of various modifying ingredients. Explicitly, we deal here with (i) the requirement of a minimum stress for damage to occur; (ii) the presence of disorder in local damage thresholds; (iii) the possibility of crack healing. On the other hand, in the regime $γ<γ_c$ the Paris exponent is seen to be sensitive to the different ingredients added to the model, with rapid healing or a high minimum stress for damage leading to $m=2$ for all $γ<γ_c$, in contrast with the linear dependence $m=6-2γ$ observed for very long characteristic healing times in the absence of a minimum stress for damage. Upon the introduction of disorder on the local fatigue thresholds, which leads to the possible appearance of multiple cracks along the propagation line, the Paris exponent tends to $m\approx 4$ for $γ\lesssim 2$, while retaining the behavior $m=γ$ for $γ\gtrsim 4$.