Arresting fatigue cracks in steel plates using prestressed bonded Fe-SMA strips
New paper out, led by Lingzhen Li (Empa / SMM Group, ETH Zurich / Hong Kong Polytechnic University) in collaboration with Sizhe Wang (Empa / Nanyang Technological University), Tao Chen (Tongji University), Eleni Chatzi (SMM Group, ETH Zurich), Hossein Heydarinouri (Empa), and Elyas Ghafoori (Leibniz University Hannover)
This work aims to quantify (1) the applied prestress of Fe-SMA bonded strengthened steel plates and (2) whether existing fatigue cracks propagate post-strengthening. We derived an analytical model for prestress and fatigue analysis. To validate the model, we strengthened four cracked steel plates at Empa using bonded Fe-SMA strips, activated prestress via electrical resistance heating, and conducted a series of fatigue tests with gradually increasing loads.
The predicted prestress levels and fatigue crack arresting behavior aligned with the experimental results.
The full paper is available in external page Volume 210 (2025) of Thin-Walled Structures