Miners Rule and Cumulative Damage Models

Miners rule is one of the most widely used cumulative damage models for
failures caused by fatigue. It is called "Miners rule" because it was popularized
by M. A. Miner in 1945. In this article, we will explain what it is and how it is
related to other more advanced cumulative damage models in ALTA.
Miners Rule

Miners rule is probably the simplest cumulative damage model. It states that if
there are k different stress levels and the average number of cycles to failure at
the ith stress, Si, is Ni, then the damage fraction, C, is:

where:

ni is the number of cycles accumulated at stress Si.

C is the fraction of life consumed by exposure to the cycles at the different stress
levels. In general, when the damage fraction reaches 1, failure occurs.

The above equation can be thought of as assessing the proportion of life

consumed at each stress level and then adding the proportions for all the levels
together. Often an index for quantifying the damage is defined as the product of
stress and the number of cycles operated under this stress, which is:

Assuming that the critical damage is the same across all the stress levels, then:
For example, lets say WFailure=50 for a component. So the component will fail
after 10 cycles at a stress level of 5, or after 25 cycles to fail at a stress level of
2, and so on. Using Eqn. (2) as the critical value of damage that will result in
failure, Eqn. (1) becomes:

C represents the proportion of the cumulative damage to the critical value.

Example
Lets use a simple example to illustrate how Miners rule is applied to model
failures caused by fatigue. Assume we are interested in the "cycles to failure" of

a paper clip. As illustrated in the following figure, a cycle is defined as opening

and closing a clip. It is known that the angle of the two arms of the paper clip
affects the number of cycles to failure. So here the "angle" is treated as the
"stress."

Figure 1: One Cycle for a Paper Clip Opening and Closing the Clip
Assume that we know from previous testing that, at an angle of 90 degrees, the
average value that causes failure is 5 cycles. So in this example,
WFailure=90x5=450. According to Miners rule, this means that at about 30 degrees,
a failure will be observed after about 15 cycles at an angle of 30 degrees; or an
average of 10 cycles will be needed to induce a failure at 45 degrees.
A paper clip has been tested according to the following test profile.
Stress
(Degrees)

Test
Cycles

Damage at
Stress Level

Cumulative
Damage

15

60

60

30

120

180

45

180

360

Based on Miners rule, how many additional cycles at 60 degrees are required in
order to break this paper clip? Using Eqn. (3):

We find that x = 1.5 more cycles are needed at 60 degrees in order to break the
paper clip.
From the above example, we can see there are several major limitations of
Miners rule:
1.

Only the expected values are used. It ignores the variation of each test unit and fails
to recognize the probabilistic nature of fatigue.

2.

A simple linear life-stress relationship is assumed. This may not be true in many realword applications.
Inverse Power Law Model

To overcome the drawbacks of the Miners rule model, probabilistic models are
used in data analysis for accelerated life testing. There are two key ingredients
in probabilistic models:
1.

The critical damage that causes failures is not a fixed value. It follows a certain
distribution.
2.
It is not necessary for the damage to accumulate linearly.

Various life-stress models have been used. [1] The Inverse Power Law model
describes the life-stress relationship using a power function, which is:

L(S) represents the life at a stress of S. K and n are model parameters. If L(S) is
the average life, we can see that Miners rule is a special case of the Inverse
Power Law model. For example, for the previous paper clip example, K=1/450
and n=1. So the life at the 90 degree angle is 5 cycles; at 60 degrees it is:

cycles
However, to consider the probabilistic nature of the failures, instead of letting
L(S) be the average life at stress S, it is treated as the "life characteristic" of a
failure time distribution. For example, the pdf for a Weibull distribution is:

If we substitute L(S) for the scale parameter , which represents the life
characteristic in the Weibull distribution, we obtain the Inverse Power LawWeibull model:
Lets use an example to explain the application of the Weibull distribution with
the Inverse Power Law life-stress relationship. To study the number of cycles to
failure of a paper clip, the following test data were obtained:
Status (F or S) Number of Cycles Angle (Degrees)
F

30

15

33

15

28

15

35

15

35

15

18

30

20

30

15

30

12

30

20

30

11

45

12

45

45

15

45

10

45

From the above table, we can see that 5 units are tested under each of the stress
levels of 15, 30 and 45 degrees. Because of the suspensions at the stress levels of
15 and 30, it is difficult to use Miners rule because the average cycles to failure
are not the averages of the failure and suspension times at each stress level.
Therefore, a Weibull distribution with Inverse Power Law life-stress relationship
is used instead.

Figure 2: Results of the Inverse Power Law Model Using ALTA

Once the model has been obtained, the reliability of the paper clip at any stress
can be predicted. Figure 3 shows the reliability together with its 90% confidence
bounds at an angle of 5 degrees.

Figure 3: Predicted Reliability at 5 Degrees for a Paper Clip

From the plot, we can see that the B10 life is about 70 cycles. In other words, at
a stress level of 5 degrees, a paper clip has a 90% chance of surviving at least 70
cycles.
Conclusion

In this article, we discussed the well-known Miners rule cumulative damage

model and compared it with a more advanced probabilistic model, the Inverse
Power Law-Weibull model. Although Miners rule is simple to use and easy to
understand, it lacks the probabilistic nature that is required for the proper
analysis of many fatigue failures. For more details on other cumulative damage
models, please refer
to http://reliawiki.org/index.php/Accelerated_Life_Testing_Data_Analysis_Refer
ence.
References
[1] ReliaSoft Corporation, Accelerated Life Testing Reference, Tucson, AZ:
ReliaSoft Publishing, 2007.