Dissolution at a Ductile Crack Tip

The growth of cracks can be substantially influenced by the environment. Atomic modeling provides a means to isolate the action of individual mechanisms involved in such complex processes. Here, we utilize a newly implemented multiscale modeling approach to assess the role of material dissolution on long crack growth in a ductile material. While we find dissolution to be capable of freeing arrested fatigue cracks, the crack tip is always blunted under both static and cyclic loading, suggesting that dissolution has an overall crack arresting effect. Despite observations of plasticity-induced-dissolution and dissolution-induced-plasticity that are consistent with macroscale experiments, dissolution-induced-blunting is found to be independent of mechanical loading magnitude. This will simplify implementation of the dissolution-induced-blunting process into continuum crack growth models.