Lecture 4 Fatigue

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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

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.

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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.
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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

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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.
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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
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Fatigue Crack Growth

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

2 > 1
a1 ao

2
da dN a1, 2

1
da dN a1,1

Cycles N

Growth rate initially small. Growth rate enhanced with increased applied stress level.
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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:

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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.
Gradient m

Lecture 4 Fatigue

logC

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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 = dN =
0 Nf af

a0

C ( K )

da

where K = a

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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.

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Fatigue Life Calculation

Solution:
da m m /2 C m /2 ( ) m a0 a 1 C 3/2 ( ) 3
3 af 3/2 a da af

Nf = = =

af

a0

2 C 3/2 ( ) 3
3

1/2 a 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

Note: 100MPa is used as crack growth stops in com pression.

= 5.5 106 cycles

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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.

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Next Lecture

Machine faults.

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