The effect of crack size and specimen size on the relation between the Paris and Wöhler curves

Paris and Wöhler’s fatigue curves are intimately connected by the physics of the process of fatigue crack growth. However, their connections are not obvious due to the appearance of anomalous specimen-size and crack-size effects. In this study, considering the equations for a notched specimen (or for a specimen where failure is the result of the propagation of a main crack) and the assumption of incomplete self-similarity on the specimen size, the relations between the size-scale effects observed in the Paris and Wöhler’s diagrams are explained. In the second part of the work, the behaviour of physically short cracks is addressed and, considering a fractal model for fatigue crack growth, the crack-size effects on the Paris and Wöhler’s curves are discussed.