An evaluation of multiaxial fatigue life assessment methods for engineering components

This article deals with the problem of multiaxial fatigue life assessment o f engineering components. General aspects of the critical plane damage mode ls are discussed first. A computer-based procedure for multiaxial fatigue l ife assessment incorporating critical plane damage models, suitable for use in design evaluations of engineering components based on finite element an alysis results, is presented and applied to correlate results from tests co nducted on SAE 1045 steel notched shaft specimens. From experimental data c orrelations, it is found that the second variant of the critical plane mode ls (in which critical planes are defined as the planes experiencing the max imum damage) provides better life estimates than the first variant (in whic h critical planes are defined as the planes experiencing the maximum range of strain) or the conventional local strain based life prediction method, e ven for simple and short loading histories made up of repeating cycles. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.