Vibrationdata

Introduction to Fatigue

By Tom Irvine

1
 Contact Information

Tom Irvine
Email: tom@irvinemail.org

Phone: (256) 924-8860

The software programs for the fatigue units are available at:

https://vibrationdata.wordpress.com

2
 Some Caveats

Vibration fatigue calculations are “ballpark” calculations given uncertainties in

S-N curves, stress concentration factors, non-linearity, temperature, surface
finish, load sequence, multi-axis loading and other variables.

Perhaps the best that can be expected is to calculate the accumulated fatigue
to the correct “order-of-magnitude.”

3
Material Tensile Test Vibrationdata

Strain calculated from

specimen’s change in length

L

Lo

Stress

F

A

4
 Stress-Strain Curve Vibrationdata

Stress 

Linear Elastic Zone

The elastic modulus E is


E
 Strain 

But material failure may occur below the ultimate limit for cyclical loading

5
Introduction

 Fatigue cracks are caused by cyclical loading

 Parts may fail at stress levels less than yield and
ultimate limits under cyclical loading
 Fatigue begins with the initiation of crack from a
pre-existing defect
 The crack grows under repetitive loading
 The damage accumulates until a sudden rupture
occurs

Spring Fatigue Failure  A Battelle study in 1982 estimated that 80 to

90% of all structural failures were due to some
fatigue mechanism

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 Fatigue Analysis Methods

• Stress-Life (SN)

Stress drives crack initiation

Works best for high cycle fatigue

• Strain-Life (EN)

Strain drives crack initiation

Models plasticity & low cycle fatigue

• Crack Growth / Fracture

Stress intensity factor drives crack growth

Assumes an existing of crack or flaw

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Crack Formation
Active layer (Ductile Tearing)
• Microvoids nucleate at inclusions in
ductile materials due to decohension or
fracturing

• Inclusions are unwanted foreign particles

(aka second phase particles) such as
oxides or sulfides introduced during
heating, casting, hot rolling or other
manufacturing steps
Image courtesy of C. Ruggieri
• Inclusions are stress concentration
factors

• Voids can also nucleate at the

intersection of slip bands and at grain
boundaries

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Crack Merging

• Microvoids may merge causing crack propagation

9
Fatigue Cracks A ductile material subjected to fatigue loading
experiences basic structural changes. The changes
occur in the following order:

1. Crack Initiation. A crack begins to form within

the material along the maximum shear plane.

2. Localized crack growth. Local extrusions and

intrusions occur at the surface of the part
because plastic deformations are not
completely reversible.

3. Crack growth on planes of high tensile stress.

The crack propagates across the section at
those points of greatest tensile stress.

4. Ultimate ductile failure. The sample ruptures by

ductile failure when the crack reduces the
effective cross section to a size that cannot
sustain the applied loads.

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Microscopic Level, Crack Initiation due to Surface Roughness

Ridge & Groove Slip Band Extrusion

Undulations

Extrusion
Original
Surface

Intrusion

 Persistent Slip
Band

Stage 1 Fatigue Crack

Gliding Dislocations
The maximum shear stress
plane occurs along a 45
45
angle for a bar under uniaxial
tension
University of Waterloo
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Scanning Electron Microscope Images, Crack Initiation

NDT Resource Center

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Stress Amplitude Time History

Sa = stress amplitude

S = stress range

• Fatigue & crack growth are driven by cyclical loading

• Mean stress can be accounted for in fatigue calculations
• Mean stress could be due to residual stress from manufacturing or
the application of an external static load

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Stress Time History Types

• The block method has been used

historically to envelop variable
amplitude loading

• But variable amplitude loading can

be analyzed directly using rainflow
cycle counting

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Fatigue Failure Due to Cyclic Loading

Inclusion

Load
Tension

Time
0

Compression

15
Fatigue Crack Patterns due to Loading Type

Image courtesy of Maintenance Technology

16
Fatigue in Shaft

Initiation from surface defect

Fatigue crack propagation, clamshell pattern

Catastrophic rupture or fast fracture

Pattern may vary according to bending, tension, torsion, etc.

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Fatigue Fracture Surfaces

Source: Metals Handbook, American

Society for Metals

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Fatigue Failure in Truck Axle

Fracture Zone

Crack
Propagation
Lines

Approximately…

Rotational, Bending Pattern,

Low Nominal Stress, No
Stress Concentration
Image courtesy of Forensic Engineering International

19
Fatigue of Cracked Propeller Blade

Image Courtesy of FAA

20
Aircraft Pressurization

• Pressure is maintained by pumping air into the cabin

• The air is bled off the gas turbine engines, then cooled and humidified before
inserted into cabin

• Pressurization cycles along with vibration, corrosion, and thermal cycling can cause
fatigue cracks to form and propagate

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• Aircraft fuselages undergo
repetitive cycles of differential
pressure with each flight

• The difference between the

cabin and the external ambient
pressure is about 6 or 7 psi at an
altitude of 36,000 feet

• Note that cabin pressure at high

altitudes is maintained at about
75% of sea level pressure, which
corresponds to the air pressure
at 8000 ft

• Some variation in these

numbers depending on the
aircraft model

22
Aircraft Structural Stresses

23
DAEDALOS, University Research Project

Dimensioning criteria for a long-range aircraft fuselage

24
Havilland DH 106 Comet

• The de Havilland DH 106 Comet was the first production commercial jetliner,
beginning service in 1952

• Several catastrophic failures occurred over the next two years

25
 • Investigators eventually
determined via testing that
aircraft’s square windows
had a “stress concentration
factor”

• Resulting stress levels were

two or three times greater
than across the rest of the
fuselage

• The window corners where thus prone to fatigue crack initiation, propagation, and fracture,
particularly at the rivet holes

• As a result, the Comet was extensively redesigned with oval windows, structural reinforcement
and other changes

26
 Aloha Airlines Flight 243 - Boeing 737-297

• Aloha Airlines Flight 243 between Hilo

and Honolulu in Hawaii suffered
extensive damage after an explosive
decompression in flight, on April 28,
1988

• The aircraft was able to land safely at

Kahului Airport on Maui

• There was one fatality — a flight

attendant was swept overboard

• Fatigue cracks occurred due to disbanding of cold bonded lap joints and hot bonded tear
joints in the fuselage panels, causing the rivets to be over-stressed

• A large number of small cracks in the fuselage may have joined to form a large crack.

• Corrosion was also a related factor

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Qantas Flight 32 - Airbus A380

• Qantas Flight 32 suffered an uncontained engine failure on 4 November 2010 and

made an emergency landing at Singapore Changi Airport

• The aircraft was an Airbus A380 with Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines

• The Australian Transport Safety Bureau concluded that “fatigue cracking” in a stub
pipe within the No. 2 engine resulted in oil leakage followed by an oil fire in the
engine

• The engine exploded, sending shrapnel into the wing which caused a fuel tank fire

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 American Airlines Flight 383
October 28, 2016

• Boeing 767 plane sits on a runway at O'Hare Airport

after it aborted takeoff due to engine fire
• The passengers and crew evacuated
• The right engine’s stage 2 high-pressure turbine disk
fractured into at least four pieces, according to a news
release from the National Transportation Safety Board
• The fractures were “consistent with fatigue cracking”

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Aircraft Landing Gear

• Landing gears are designed to absorb the loads arising from taxiing, take-off, and landing

• Hard landing shock is a particular concern

• Fatigue cracks can form in the struts and trunnion arms as a results of shock & vibration
loads

• Again, corrosion can be a related factor

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Landing Shock, Trigger Levels for Unscheduled Inspection and Maintenance

Note that the recorders have a convention that the aircraft is under a 1 G vertical load while
it is stationary on the ground, or during level flight.

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Gear Tooth Contact Stresses

32
 Gear Tooth Interior Fatigue Fracture (TIFF)

The TIFF crack-producing stress of are due to:

• Constant residual tensile stresses in the interior of the tooth due to case
hardening (diffusion of carbon, nitrogen and boron and heat treatment)
• Alternating stresses due to the idler usage of the gear wheel

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Axle Fatigue

Image Courtesy of Machine Design

34
Fatigue Crack Initiation in Welded Joints

• Hydrogen cracking may also be called cold cracking or delayed cracking

• The principal distinguishing feature of this type of crack is that it occurs in

steel, most often immediately on welding or a short time after welding

35
Fatigue Crack along Welded Joint, Mountain Bike Frame

36
Repetitive Impact Fatigue Cracking, Golf Club Heads

• Crack formation may be accompanied

by a change in the sound produced
when head strikes the ball

• May or may not be covered under

manufacturer’s warranty

37
Circuit Board

Cracked solder Joints for Piece Part with “J leads”

38
Mars Curiosity Rover Wheels, Low Cycle Fatigue Cracks

• Each wheel tire was machined from a single

block of aluminum alloy 7075-T7351

• The skin of the wheel is 0.75 millimeters thick,

the absolute thinnest that could be machined

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Earthquake Engineering Fatigue

• LCF - low cycle fatigue

• ULCF - ultra low cycle fatigue

• Structure subjected to a major

earthquake
• Or multiple earthquakes including
aftershocks

1994 Northridge Earthquake

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Reinforced Concrete

• Fatigue fractures of the steel

reinforcement bars in the area
of ​a frame corner

• The picture was made by Patrick

Fehlmann as part of his
dissertation on the fatigue of
reinforced concrete bridges

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Plastic Hinges in Beam Structures

Cracks form in the

beam plastic hinge
zones

Image courtesy of Canterbury Earthquake Royal Commission

42
Damage Tolerance

• Damage tolerance is a property of a structure relating to its ability to sustain defects safely
until repair can be effected

• Assumes that flaws can exist in any structure and such flaws propagate with usage

• Manage the extension of cracks in structure through the application of the principles of
fracture mechanics

• Implement maintenance program that will result in the detection and repair of accidental
damage, corrosion and fatigue cracking before such damage reduces the residual strength of
the structure below an acceptable limit

• Can be used with “fail-safe” designs that have redundant load paths for survival followed by
repair

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Wöhler Stress-Life Approach

Bearing Chuck Bearing

Drive Shaft Specimen

Load

August Wöhler (1819 –1914) Wöhler Rotating Fatigue Test

• German Railway Engineer

• Drove trains and did testing, analysis

and design work

• Investigated the causes of fracture in

railroad axles

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Rotating Fatigue Test Machine

• Based on Wohler’s design

• Uses a motor to rotate a circular cantilever specimen with a load at its free end

• Image Courtesy of TecQuipment

45
Axial Fatigue Test Machine

• The test specimen is mounted

between the grips

• Specimen is cyclically loaded in

tension and compression

• Other machines can perform torsion

or combined loading

46
Train Axle

• Wöhler concluded that train axle failure incidents

were due to cyclical loading & unloading

• The rotating axle is submitted to a shear load due

the weight of the train car, which in turns induces a
bending moment in the axle

• The bottom becomes the top and vice versa after

each half turn

• So the stresses on a particular region of material at

the surface varies sinusoidally from tension to
compression and back again

• This is now known as fully reversed fatigue loading

47
Modern Train Wheel Design & Analysis

Let W = 200,000 lbm

48
Wöhler S-N Curve

Failure Zone

Safe Zone
Threshold
Curve

The material can endure a stress up to 200 MPa for 1000 cycles.
49
 Idealized S-N Curve, log-log format

log (S1000 / Se )
b=
log(103 / 107 )

Nf Cycles to Failure

• Certain materials such as steel may have an endurance or fatigue limit

• But aluminum does not have a well define one
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 Idealized S-N Curve, log-log format

 
1 /b
Sa = A Nf

Nf Cycles to Failure

• The Basquin curve is valid over the high cycle fatigue domain
• The fatigue strength coefficient A is equal to the stress limit raised to the exponent
b when Nf = 1 for the hypothetical extrapolation 51
 Stress Ratios Sine Loading Types
Stress Ratio R= -1 Mean = 0

3
Fully Reversed Cycles, Worst R case
2 Tension is positive
1
R = ( Smin / Smax )
Stress

-1

-2

-3
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0

Time

Stress Ratio R=0 Mean = (1/2) Max Stress Ratio R=1/3 Mean = (2/3) Max

3 3

2 2

1 1

Stress
Stress

0 0

-1 -1
Released Tension case
-2 -2

-3 -3
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0

Time Time

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Consider Potential Stress Concentration Factor for Local Stress

53
Consider Potential Stress Concentration Factor for Local Stress (cont)

54
S-N Curve Reference Data

 But the S-N Curves in material reference books are not Basquin curves
 Rather they use the S-N equation shown on the next slide

55
Sample Wöhler S-N Curve, MIL-HDBK-5J
 The stress ratio is
S-N Curve, Aluminum 7075-T6 Stress Concentration Factor Kt=1

R  Smin / Smax

 Smin and S max are

the respective minimum
and maximum stresses in
a particular stress cycle

 The critical number of cycles for a given stress level is: log N f  A  B log (Seq  C)
 The equivalent stress is given by: Seq  S max 1  R P

 Material coefficients are: A, B, C, and P

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Approximate Endurance Limit for Materials

Take allowable stress amplitude at some very high cycle number

Adapted from Juvinall and Marshek [1991]

Su is the ultimate stress limit

S’e is the endurance limit

57
NASA-HDBK-5010 Rule-of-Thumb for Omitting Fatigue Analysis

• Peak stress can be compared to the endurance limit, but some materials do not
have identified endurance limits

• Perform endurance limit analysis to show the maximum stress Smax does not
exceed the endurance limit or

Smax < Ftu / [ 4 (1-0.5 R) ]

where

Ftu = tensile ultimate stress

R = stress ratio

• Note that R=-1 for fully reversed stress with zero mean stress

• Rule: Smax < Ftu/6 for fully reversed stress

58
Palmgren-Miner’s Accumulated Fatigue

• Real-world vibration may be random, sine, sine-on-random, nonstationary, etc.

• A method is needed to calculate fatigue damage for variable amplitude loading

• Let n be the number of stress cycles accumulated during the vibration field or test
environment at a given level stress level represented by index i

• Let N be the number of cycles to produce a fatigue failure at the stress level limit for the
corresponding index

• Miner’s cumulative damage index R is given by

m
ni
R
i 1 Ni

where m is the total number of cycles

• Damage accumulates in a linear manner

• Failure occurs for R >= 1

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Palmgren-Miner’s Accumulated Fatigue (cont)

• Basquin method, Miner’s cumulative damage index R is given by

1 m
R   n i ib
A i 1

where i is the stress level

A is the fatigue strength when N = 1

b is the fatigue exponent

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Accumulated Fatigue Failure Threshold

• The following are upper limits, from least to most conservative

R Reference
1.0 Palmgen-Miner Theory
0.7 Steinberg, Vibration Analysis for Electronic Equipment, recommended for
aerospace components
0.25 Safarin, Spacecraft Structures and Mechanisms, equation (12.14), accounts for
variability in the S-N curve, uncertainties, etc. (Sarafin actually recommends
multiplying the damage by 4 for the R=1 comparison, which is equivalent to
lowering R to 0.25 without the damage multiplication).
0.1 Wirsching, Paez, Oritz, Random Vibrations Theory and Practice, page 289.
Recommend value for components where the “consequences of failure are
serious.”

61
Block Amplitude Loading Example

• This time history is conceptual

• The actual number of cycles at each level is shown in the

table in the next slide

• The time unit is irrelevant for fatigue damage calculation

62
Accumulated Fatigue for Block Amplitude Loading Example

a
• A component made from brittle
aluminum is subjected to the
b
load-cycles in the table
c
• The damage ratio summation is
R= 0.7

Point Stress Actual Allowable Damage

(MPa) Cycles Cycles Ratio
a 200 300 103 0.30
b 150 2000 104 0.20
c 100 2(105) 106 0.20

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