Novel insights into the physics of fatigue crack growth: Theoretical and experimental research on the fundamentals of crack growth in isotropic materials

Fatigue crack growth in metals has been studied intensively for more than half a century. This research field has been closely connected to the engineering industry throughout history. It is therefore no surprise that the main focus has mostly been on developing better prediction models rather than on understanding the phenomenon of fatigue crack growth. This dissertation focuses on improving our understanding of the underlying physics, and presents several novel insights primarily relating to crack closure modeling and crack growth rate modeling....