Model‐based analysis of the influence of surface roughness on fatigue processes

Abstract In the last decade, the phase field method was developed to simulate fatigue fracture processes. The biggest advantage of phase field modeling is its unified framework, in which the entire fracture evolution from nucleation to propagation is covered. Even though it is known that surface roughness has an essential impact on fatigue life, it has rarely been considered directly in phase field models for fatigue processes due to the required computational effort. In this work, we provide a simulation setup to incorporate roughness profiles into a phase field model for fatigue cracks. We have used a roughness model for our studies and also present initial results that show agreement between simulation and experiments.