Fatigue Test

Objectives

Recognize fatigue as a major cause of failure in mechanical components subject to cyclic loading. Define common terms related to fatigue testing. Describe the general procedure and equipment used in conducting fatigue testing. Recognize the stress-life data presentation in the SN curve and be able to define fatigue limit, fatigue strength, and fatigue life. Recognize the major characteristics of fatigue fracture surface.

Fatigue

Failure caused by cyclic loading is termed fatigue The number of total loading cycles applied until fracture is called the fatigue-life. Fatigue is responsible for more than 70% all Engineering materials failures.

Fatigue Stages
Fatigue failure consists of two stages

Crack initiating Crack propagation

Crack initiating

For machine components containing no preexisting cracks, the majority of fatigue life is spent in initiating or starting fatigue cracks and the fatigue process is described as initiation-controlled. Examples of these include crank shafts, gear teeth, and rotating shafts or axles

Crack propagation

Large structures or welded parts almost always contain pre-existing cracks such as in bridges, ships, and pressure vessels. In such structures, the majority of fatigue life is spent in growing a pre-existing crack to a critical size and then to final fracture. The fatigue process in this case is described propagationcontrolled.

S-N Curve

Fatigue Limit

For some materials, there is a stress level below which fatigue failure will not take place. This stress level is a property of the material and called the endurance limit or the fatigue limit and can be observed only in the S-N curves for steel alloys.

Fatigue Strength

Many materials do not show some definite limit. For such materials we some take definite value of stress Most common is 107 cycles

Important Factors

Stress concentrators Surface finish Size of Specimen

Experiment

In this laboratory session we will be concerned only with fatigue testing of un-cracked specimens where most of fatigue life is spent in the initiation stage