In Situ Measurement of Cyclic Plastic Zone and Internal Strain Response of Q&P Steel near Fatigue Crack Tip Region Based on Micro-DIC

The shape and internal dynamic response characteristics of the plastic zone near the fatigue crack tip region, especially the cyclic plastic zone (CPZ), are the main factors affecting the fatigue crack initiation and propagation behaviors of ductile metal materials. The existing methods for characterizing the CPZ have some problems, which include the complexity of the process, the difficulty of achieving in situ measurement, and the inability to characterize the dynamic response in the CPZ during the crack propagation process. Therefore, a novel method is proposed for the in situ measurement of the CPZ near the crack tip region based on image stitching and matching algorithms, a load–strain loop curve characteristic judgement algorithm, and the microscopic digital image correlation (DIC) method. A microscopic camera and a macroscopic camera are used to simultaneously capture the micro crack tip speckle images and the global crack image of the two sides of the Compact Tension (CT) specimen for calculating in situ crack length and crack tip strain fields. The proposed method was performed and verified by a fatigue crack growth (FCG) test and micro-hardness experiments with Quenching and Partitioning 980 (Q&P980) steel, and the results show that the method is feasible because the maximum error is less than 5%. A “butterfly wings” shape of the CPZ and a strain concentration phenomenon in the CPZ of the Q&P980 were observed. Moreover, as the fatigue crack propagates, the area of the CPZ and the degree of the strain concentration increase gradually. This method, which can obtain the in situ and tracking measurements of the crack tip CPZ, will help to increase our understanding of CPZ characteristics, the FCG mechanism, and the behavior of Q&P steel and the plastic metal materials similar to Q&P steel.