A verification of the assumption of anti-fatigue design

In this paper, the approaches of anti-fatigue design are briefly reviewed a nd are classified into three groups: nominal stress approach, local stress- strain approach and stress field intensity approach. Two types, each with t wo notches, are specially designed and a total of 30 specimens with 4 dimen sions are tested under different constant-amplitude loading. These specimen s are also analysed with elasto-plastic FEM to obtain stress-strain distrib utions and stress concentration factors. Fatigue life is estimated based on the different approaches. Experimental and analytical results show that th e assumption of stress field intensity is more reasonable than that of the other approaches. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.