FATIGUE

Fatigue of Materials (Cambridge Solid State Science Series)

S. Suresh
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1998)
Salient Features

 Materials subjected to repetitive or fluctuating stress fails at a stress much

lower than that required to cause fracture in a single application of a load
 It is estimated that fatigue accounts for ~90% of all service failures due to
mechanical causes
 Fatigue failure occurs without any obvious warning
 Fatigue results in fracture which appears brittle without gross deformation
at fracture
 On a macroscopic scale the fracture surface is usually normal to the
direction of the principal tensile stress
 Fatigue failure is usually initiated at a site of stress concentration (E.g.:
macroscopic: notch; microstructural: inclusion)
 Sufficiently high maximum tensile stress

Factors
necessary to
Large variation/fluctuation in stress
cause fatigue
failure

Sufficiently large number of stress cycles

Factors which play an important role in fatigue

 Stress concentration
 Corrosion
 Temperature
 Microstructure
 Residual stress
 Stress state
Types of stress cycles and parameters characterizing them

Completely
reversed cycle of
stress

← Compressive Tensile →
 r   max   min a
← Stress →
0 r
Cycles →
 Purely tensile

Tensile stress →
cycles

r
max
m
min
 r   max   min 0
Cycles →
r  max   min
a  
2 2
 max   min
m 
2
 min
Stress ratio  R 
 max
 a 1 R
Amplitude ratio  A  
 m 1 R
 cycles
Random stress

← Stress →
← Compressive Tensile →
0
Cycles →
S-N Curve

 Engineering fatigue data is usually plotted as a S-N curve

[S: stress; N: number of cycles to failure (usually fracture), plotted as
log(N)]
 The stress plotted : a, max, min
 Stress values plotted are nominal values
(no account for stress concentrations)
 Each plot is for a constant m, R or A
 Most fatigue experiments are with m = 0 (rotating beam tests)
 S-N curves deal with fatigue failure at a large number of cycles (> 105)
 Stress < y but microscopic plasticity occurs
 Stress   life 
 For low cycle fatigue (N < 104 or 105 cycles) tests are conducted in
controlled cycles of elastic + plastic strain (instead of stress control)
 S-N Curve
400
Bending stress (MPa) →

300
Fatigue limit
Mild steel
200 No fatigue limit  fatigue strength
is specified for and arbitary
Aluminium alloy
number of cycles (~ 108 cycles)
100

0
105 106 107 108
Number of cycles to failure (N) →

 Steel, Ti show fatigue limit

Fatigue limit = Endurance limit  Al, Mg, Cu show no fatigue limit
S-N Curve: Basquin equation

 S-N curve in the high cycle region is described by the

Basquin equation: N  Ca
p
a is the stress amplitude, p & C emperical constants

 S-N curve is determined using 8-12 specimens

 Starting with a stress of two-thirds of the static tensile strength of the
material the stress is lowered till specimens do not fail in about 107 cycles
 Usually there is considerable scatter in the results
Strain controlled cyclic loading