Lecture 4 Fatigue

Course material available at

http://www.dynamics.group.shef.ac.uk/people/graeme/mec415.htm

Lecture 4 Fatigue

Lecture Overview
Machines and
Structures

Life Cycle
Costs

Maintenance

Damage etc.

Maintenance
Strategies

Predictive
Maintenance
Organisation

Lecture 4 Fatigue

Lecture Overview

Historical background to fatigue.

Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM).

Fatigue crack growth.

Fatigue life calculation.

Lecture 4 Fatigue

Historical Background to Fatigue

Versailles train crash (1842) as a result of fatigue

damage to locomotive axle Rankine recognises
the importance of stress concentrations in
railroad axle failures.
First systematic study of
S-N curves conducted by
Whler (1870) to
characterise the fatigue
behaviour of materials
cyclic stress range is more
important than peak stress.
Lecture 4 Fatigue

Historical Background to Fatigue

Three Comet passenger jets broke

up in mid-air and crashed within a
single year (1954) due to fatigue
initiated cracks. All aircraft
windows were immediately
redesigned with rounded corners.
Paris (1962) derived relationships
for the stage II crack growth with
cycles N, in terms of the cyclical
component K of the Stress
Intensity Factor K.
Lecture 4 Fatigue

Historical Background to Fatigue

Aloha incident (1988)

highlighted multiple site
fatigue damage on a
Boeing 737.
Eschede train disaster
(1998) was the world's
deadliest high-speed train
disaster due to fatigue in
metal wheels.

Lecture 4 Fatigue

Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics

Two fracture modes possible ductile or brittle

relative terms whether a fracture is ductile or
brittle depends on situation.
All fractures involve crack formation followed by
crack propagation. Mode of fracture highly
dependent on crack propagation mechanism.

Ductile crack propagation stable.

Brittle crack propagation unstable.

Ductile fracture always preferred warning signs

and more strain energy required.
Lecture 4 Fatigue

Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics

Fracture mechanics is a field concerned with

predicting failure of a structure containing a
crack uses methods of analytical and
experimental solid mechanics to characterize a
material's resistance to fracture.
Actual fatigue strength of solid material
significantly lower than theoretical value based
on cohesive forces due to microscopic flaws
(Griffith, 1920).
Stress concentration factors is a ratio of
maximum stress at crack or macroscopic
features to nominal stress.
Lecture 4 Fatigue

Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics

Three modes by which load can operate on a

crack:

Opening

Sliding

Tearing

Each mode has a stress intensity factor K which

relates load, crack size and structure geometry:
K = a

where is applied stress, a is crack length and

is dimensionless factor which depends on crack length and

component geometry.
Lecture 4 Fatigue

Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics

Fracture occurs when the stress intensity factor

exceeds some critical value K c known as the
fracture toughness (cf. stress and yield strength).
For given material,
component geometry
and crack size and
position, one can
calculate the fracture
stress (residual
strength) of component.

Lecture 4 Fatigue

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Fatigue Crack Growth

Fatigue is a form of failure that occurs in

structures under dynamic and fluctuating
stresses (bridges, aircraft, machinery).
Failure can occur at stress levels considerably
lower than tensile or yield strength for static load.
Single largest cause of failure in metals (~90%).
Catastrophic, occurring suddenly and without
warning.
Fatigue failure is brittle-like in nature (even in
normally ductile materials) very little plastic
deformation.
Lecture 4 Fatigue

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Fatigue Crack Growth

Process occurs by initiation and propagation of

cracks.
Applied stress can be axial (tensioncompression), flexural (bending) or torsional
(twisting) in nature.
Three different fluctuating stress-time modes
possible reversed stress cycle, repeated stress
cycle or random stress cycle.
Several parameters used to characterise
fluctuating stress cycle.
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Fatigue Crack Growth

Lecture 4 Fatigue

13

Fatigue Crack Growth

Fatigue crack properties can be determined by

lab simulation tests.
Service stress conditions duplicated as closely
as possible (stress level & pattern and time
frequency).
Start at high stress amplitude
and cycle to failure repeat
with lower stress gives
S-N curve.
Two types of behaviour
observed.
Lecture 4 Fatigue

14

Fatigue Crack Growth

Three steps of fatigue failure:

Crack initiation

Crack propagation

Final failure

Fatigue life, the total number of cycles can be

taken to be sum of number of cycles for crack
initiation and crack propagation.
Low stress levels large fraction of fatigue life is
initiation. High stress levels propagation
dominates.
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Fatigue Crack Growth

LEFM approach for predicting the life of a

component under crack growth assumes that it
contains a pre-existing crack of length a0 and it
is assumed that it is desired to determine the
number of load cycles Nf required to grow the
crack to some final size af .
Final crack length could be fracture size or
based on ease of repair.
Based on work of Paris et al. who demonstrated
that cyclic range in stress intensity factor K
controls the fatigue crack growth rate da .
dN
Lecture 4 Fatigue

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Fatigue Crack Growth

Typical plot of crack length a versus number of
cycles N:
Crack length a

2 > 1

2
da
dN

a1, 2

a1

1
da
dN

a1,1

ao

Cycles N

Growth rate initially small.

Growth rate enhanced with increased applied
stress level.
Lecture 4 Fatigue

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Fatigue Crack Growth

Paris showed that part of fatigue crack growth

(stage II) is governed by the expression:
da
m
= C ( K ) where a is crack size, N is number of
dN
cycles, and C and m are material constants.

Stress intensity factor range at the crack tip is:

K = K max K min = ( max min ) a

Taking logarithms of both sides of above

equation gives:
da
log
= m log K + logC

dN
Lecture 4 Fatigue

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Fatigue Crack Growth

Upper asymptote when

Kmax approaches fracture
toughness Kc.
Lower asymptote for
small K when there is
no crack growth.

Lecture 4 Fatigue

Gradient m

logC

19

Fatigue Life Calculation

One of goals of failure analysis is to predict

fatigue life for some component. This can be
done by integrating the Paris law:
Nf

Nf = dN =
0

af

da

C ( K )

where K = a

a0

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Fatigue Life Calculation

Example: A relatively large sheet of steel is

exposed to cyclic tensile and compressive
stresses of magnitudes 100MPa and 50 MPa,
respectively. Prior to testing, it has been
determined that the length of the largest surface
crack is 2mm. Estimate the fatigue life of this
sheet if the critical crack length is 20mm and the
values of m and C are 3.0 and 1x10-12. Assume
that is independent of crack length and has a
value of 1.0.

Lecture 4 Fatigue

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Fatigue Life Calculation

Solution:

Nf =
=
=

af

da
m
m /2
C m /2 ( ) m a0 a
af

1
C 3/2 ( ) 3
3

3/2
a
da

a0

af

C 3/2 ( ) 3
3

a 1/2
a0

1
1

3
3/2
3

a
a
C ( ) 0
f
2
1
1

3
0.02
1 1012 3/2 (100 ) 13 0.002
2

= 5.5 106 cycles

Note: 100MPa is used as crack

growth stops in com pression.

Lecture 4 Fatigue

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Lecture Review

Historical background to fatigue and importance.

Simple Fracture, Stress Intensity Factors and
Fracture Toughness.
Fatigue, stress-time modes, S-N curves.
Crack growth curves, Paris Law and fatigue life
calculation.

Lecture 4 Fatigue

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Next Lecture

Machine faults.

Lecture 4 Fatigue

24