Originally developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory, AFGROW[1] is mainly used for aerospace applications, but can be applied to any type of metallic structure that experiences fatigue cracking.
AFGROW's history traces back to a crack growth life prediction program (ASDGRO) which was written in BASIC for IBM-PCs by E. Davidson at ASD/ENSF in the early-mid-1980s.
The primary modification was changing the coding language from BASIC to Turbo Pascal and C. Numerous small changes/repairs were made based on errors that were discovered.
The stress intensity factor library provides models for over 30 different crack geometries (including tension, bending and bearing loading for many cases).
Users may create their own stress intensity solutions by writing and compiling dynamic link libraries (DLLs) using relatively simple codes.
This interface also makes it possible for finite element analysis software to provide three-dimensional based stress intensity information throughout the crack life prediction process.