Citation

Newby M. Reliab. Eng. 1987; 18(1): 57-60.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1987, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0143-8174(87)90053-9

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A critical review of fatigue crack growth models shows that many of the models presented are special cases of a general Markov process whose probability density functions satisfy the Kolmogorov forward and backward equations. In making this observation the well developed theory of Markov processes is made available for the solution of crack growth problems. In particular, the forward equation gives the distribution of crack length and the backward equation offers a solution to the problem of determining the initial crack length distribution.