In industry, structural elements with small cracks are widely used; however, little research has been done on relatively simple methods for lifetime evaluation of such structural elements. This study proposes a generalization of the equivalent area method for a case of small fatigue cracks using an alternative representation of the relation between the crack propagation rate and the crack tip opening. A tension problem for a three-dimensional body with an elliptical crack has been solved analytically by applying the generalized equivalent area method and numerically by the Runge-Kutta method. The comparison of the obtained solutions has shown a good correlation of the results that confirms the potential application of the generalized equivalent area method to short crack problems.
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Nataliya Yadzhak (2020) studied this question.