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Wöhler diagram
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A Wöhler Diagram is a graph on a statistical basis that relates the alternating component of a fatigue cycle to the
number of cycles that a specimen bears before breaking at a predetermined probability .

Index
Construction of the Wöhler diagram
Parameters obtainable from a Wöhler curve
Related items
Other projects

Construction of the Wöhler

diagram
The diagram (or curve) of Wöhler takes its name from its
creator August Wöhler , who was among the first scholars
to deal profitably with the study of fatigue. It was the first
Typical Wöhler diagram on a logarithmic scale
formal tool available to designers for the fatigue sizing of
the components and is still of fundamental importance.
Its construction takes place in this way: a certain stress cycle with a specific amplitude is reconstructed in the
laboratory and applied to a large number of specimens, noting the number of cycles that they bear before breaking.
Fatally they, although subjected to the same load, will not all break after the same number of cycles, but there will be a
dispersionof the results. Experience shows that this dispersion occurs according to a normal distribution .

The same series of experiments is then repeated at different values of the alternating sigma (alternating component of
the stress cycle), and the average value of the number of cycles before failure is noted for each distribution .

The curve that connects all the average values to each is the Wöhler curve at 50% probability of breakage. This
means that with regard to the tested specimens, there is a 50% probability that they, subjected to an amplitude load
cycle , break before reaching the number of cycles bounded by the Wöhler curve; this simply derives from the
properties of the normal distribution. Of course, it is possible to construct curves at 20%, at 10% or at any probability,
joining instead of the points of the average values those that correspond to this probability value.

Given the high number of cycles that one achieves, and given that in this way the diagram can be simplified
considerably from a mathematical point of view, in most cases the Wöhler curves are presented with the axes in
logarithmic scale.

Parameters obtainable from a Wöhler curve

The Wöhler curve does not intersect the ordinate axis (ie for N = 1/2, on a logarithmic scale) in correspondence with
half the static breaking load of the material, we will have an infinite value of the fatigue strength that is fatal to the
piece. Subsequently it remains constant for a certain stretch, and then decreases rather quickly, generally between

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5/13/2019 Wöhler diagram - Wikipedia

is . For many ferrous alloys (thus

excluding aluminum, copper, magnesium), it then
presents a sort of horizontal asymptote which tends to a
value of the effort called the fatigue limit : it represents
the value of the below which, even for an ideally infinite
number of cycles, the material will not break due to
fatigue. It is customary to divide the Wöhler diagram into
two regions, called LCF (Low-Cycle Fatigue, low cycle
fatigue) and HCF (High-Cycle Fatigue, high cycle fatigue),
the first for higher sigma values to the yield strength of
the material, where there are macroscopic plasticization
and consequently the life of the material is very limited;
the second for lower sigma values, where cyclic
plasticisations exist only at the microscopic level.

Construction of a Wohler curve

Related items
Fatigue failure of metals

Other projects
Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/?uselang=it) contains images or other files on
Wöhler's Diagram (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:S-N_curves?uselang=it)

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This page was last modified on 18 March 2019 at 17:55.

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