Contents

S. No Content Page No.

1. Acknowledgement 4
2. Abstract 5
3. Literature Survey 6-9
4. Experiment And Analysis 10
5. Conclusion 11
6. Discussion 12
7. References 13
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to thank VIT University for giving us the opportunity

to work on this project.

We would like to show our gratitude toward our teacher Prof.

Narendra Kumar for his continuous support and guidance.

Abstract
Take an Al/any thin beam and apply cyclic loading and generate
an SN curve. Now, can you introduce a hole and repeat the
experiment. What do you observe? Now can you relocate the hole
at a different portion of the beam and repeat the experiment?
What do you observe?

The aim behind doing this project was to gain a better

understanding of the phenomenon of failure in material subjected
to cyclic loading, particularly a ductile material like Al, to get
associated with the use of cyclic loading machine, to able to read
and comprehend research papers, to be able to follow a sound
research methodology and to be able to present the ideas and
concepts that we came across effectively.

Literature Survey
Introduction

Failure in materials is a phenomenon that is dealt with extensively

in engineering. In order to be able to select suitable materials for
the different components of a machine based on the type of
loading conditions that they are exposed to, an engineer must
have a very clear idea of how, when and why a material fails.
Failure in this context can be defined as the material not behaving
or functioning the way it is supposed to any longer.

In this field of study, the concepts of cracks initiation and crack

growth are the main tools that an engineer uses to be able to
explain how, why and when a material fails. These concepts are
very complex and are still topics of extensive research.
Mathematical modeling of these concepts is also done in order to
be able to predict fatigue life of various materials under different
loading conditions.

Literature

After receiving our project title, we looked for research papers

that dealt with similar concepts and experiments. To do so, we
used Google Scholar. We were able to select a few research
papers by reading the abstract and correlating it with our title. All
papers that seemed to deal with concepts that we were required
to understand were chosen.

We selected a total of 5 research papers over the course of our

project and we analyzed and tried to understand what happens
when Al is subjected to cyclic loading. During this process, many
papers that were selected for study were rejected upon further
reading since their true essence was revealed then.

The first research paper that we chose [1], dealt with the fatigue
life of Al alloys with casting defects. We felt this paper would give
us what we needed since we thought the holes that our title
referred to were surface holes and could be considered as pits.
Also, this paper had a sufficiently detailed explanation of fatigue
life, S-N curves and what goes into generating one. This paper,
like all other papers selected, also helped us to learn and
understand the kind of thought process that one must use when
doing research in general. The authors of the paper assessed the
fatigue life of T4 and T6 Al alloy having the following chemical
composition by weight%, Fe 0.12, Mg 0.33, Si 7.07, Sr 0.0255, Ti
0.121. The T4 and T6 material used for fatigue analysis was taken
from 2 sources. DC(Direct Chill) cast T4 and T6 Al was used as a
reference material to complete and to explain the effects of flaws
in a material on its failure. This was done because DC cast
material has very few flaws and defects. The other source was
wheel