Non-localized Creep Assessment of V-Notched Components: A Review

Geometrical discontinues such as notches need to be carefully analysed by engineers because of the stress concentration generated by them. Notches become even more important when the component is subjected, in service, to very severe conditions, such as the high temperature fatigue and imposed visco-plastic behaviour such as creep. The aim of the paper is to present an improvement and extension of the existing notch tip creep stress-strain analysis method developed by Nuñez and Glinka, validated for U-notches only, to a wide variety of blunt V-notches. The key in getting the extension to blunt V-notches is the assumption of the generalized Lazzarin-Tovo solution that allows a unified approach to the evaluation of linear elastic stress fields in the neighbourhood of both cracks and notches. Numerous examples have been analysed up to date, and the stress fields obtained according to the proposed method were compared with appropriate finite element data, showing a very good agreement. In view of the promising results, authors are considering possible further extension of the method to sharp V-notches and cracks introducing the concept of the Strain Energy Density (SED).