Stress Redistribution Near a Crack in Maraging Steel using Composite Patch

Abstract

The presence of a crack significantly reduces the load bearing capacity of a structure made of fracture prone material. The conventional process of repairing a defect is gouging and filling the gouged location by rewelding. It is not only time consuming but also constrained by the number of repairs that can be done as material properties degrade with each round of rewelding. In an attempt to overcome the limitation of the conventional repair process, repairing a defect using composite patch is proposed. The study is carried out on Maraging steel (M250) and the defect considered is a crack. Stress intensity factor (SIF), being an important parameter in fracture-based design, it is evaluated in Abaqus. Extended finite element method is used to model the crack. SIF is used to predict the failure load of a surface cracked tension specimen and the same is compared with the values reported in literature. Composite patch is modelled using woven ply properties. A separate layer of adhesive is also modelled to predict the properties adhesive properties. Failure analysis of each component namely, the Maraging steel plate, the composite patch and the adhesive is carried.  It was observed that the addition of a composite patch completely nullifies the presence of a crack. The patch with thickness 1mm and woven ply properties is having minimal damage initiation and likely to survive. The adhesive properties required is also obtained from the finite element analysis.  Thus, it was observed that a composite patch with woven ply properties and thickness 1mm is able to completely nullify the effect of a crack when bonded with a suitable adhesive as predicted by the analysis.