Handbook of Fatigue Crack Propagation in Metallic Structures

Book excerpt: The purpose of this Handbook is to provide a review of the knowledge and experiences in the field of fatigue fracture mechanics. It is well-known that engineering structures can fail due to cyclic loading. For instance, a cyclically time-varying loading reduces the structure strength and can provoke a fatigue failure consisting of three stages: (a) crack initiation (b) crack propagation and (c) catastrophic failure. Since last century many scientists have tried to understand the reasons for the above-mentioned failures and how to prevent them. This Handbook contains valuable contributions from leading experts within the international scientific community and covers many of the important problems associated with the fatigue phenomena in civil, mechanical and nuclear engineering.