Search

Failure of materials and structures is one of unresolved problems of mechanics. This paper offers an approximate approach to assessing durability of products on the basis of a mechanical experiment. The experiment represents the fatigue process as a transition of a plastic material into its brittle state. A simplified physical model - which could be used to build a mathematical model of fatigue process - hangs on a local transition of a plastic material into its brittle state. The calculation methodology includes both an original part on cyclic degradation of material strength and correlations based on experiments and checked by design routines. Two approaches to calculating the durability of a randomly-loaded object are compared: using the equation of cyclic degradation of strength and the rule of linear summation of fatigue damages. The results obtained are useful for improving methodologies of calculating service life or durability of structures. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2018.