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Functionally graded steels are produced from austenitic stainless steel and carbon steel by controlling the chemical distribution of chromium, nickel and carbon atoms at the remelting stage through electroslag remelting process. In the present paper, the strain-energy density criterion is employed to assess the critical load of rounded V-notched components made of functionally graded bainitic steel. A crack arrester configuration under mixed mode loading is considered. The flow (yield/ultimate) strength and fracture toughness are assumed to vary exponentially along the notch depth direction while the Young’s modulus and the Poisson’s ratio are assumed to be constant. The control volume, which is a reminiscent of Neuber’s elementary structural volume, depends on the ultimate tensile strength σ ut and the fracture toughness K IC in the case of brittle or quasi-brittle materials subjected to static loadings. Since, σ ut and K IC are not constant along the notch depth, the control volume which can be obtained numerically as a function of the variation of these material properties through the specimen width. Different values of the notch root radius (from 0.2 to 2.0 mm) and notch depth (from 5 to 7 mm) are considered. The assessed critical fracture loads are in sound agreement with the experimental results.

The effects of detached base length on the natural frequencies and modal shapes of cylindrical shell structures were investigated in this work. Some of the important applications for this type of problem can be found in the cracked fan and rotor blades that can be idealized as partially supported shells with varying unsupported lengths. A finite element model based on small deflection linear theory was developed to obtain numerical solutions for this class of problems. The numerical results were generated for shallow shells and some of the degenerate cases are compared with other results available in the literature. The computations presented here involve a wide range of variables: material properties, aspect ratios, support conditions, and radius to base ratio.

First-order transverse shear-deformation Mindlin theory has been used to predict the free vibration frequencies and modal shapes for isotropic, laminated and composite plates or shells. A finite element model based on the small deflection linear theory has been developed to obtain numerical solutions for this class of problems. The results for some of the degenerate cases are compared with other results available in the literature. These analyses involve a wide number of variables, namely; material properties, aspect ratios, support conditions and also radius to base ratio. The cracked base plates, shells and blades are idealized as partially supported models with varying support lengths. The effects of the detached base length on natural frequencies, modal shapes and nodal lines of these types of structures are investigated. Although the expected decrease in frequency with increase in the detached base length is observed almost for all modes it is seen that this behavior is very pronounced for higher modes in both plates and shells. Analysis also showed that the variation of the detached base length has a small effect on the natural frequencies of plates and shells with large aspect ratios ( b/a > 2, r/a > 2).