Search

In the present work, the fatigue resistance values of Scalmalloy specimens obtained by selective laser melting (SLM) additive manufacturing (AM) are experimentally studied. The fatigue levels of specimens with and without notches after applying different surface treatments, such as sand blasting, shot peening, isotropic finishing, and polishing alone or in combination, are analyzed. To understand the fatigue behavior of this material, the surface finishes and internal residual stresses of the specimens are analyzed. Moreover, the fracture surface of each sample is observed by electron microscopy to determine the failure mechanism. There is a clear separation between two different types of failure: (1) rupture by a crack generated on the surface associated with high applied stress values and (2) failure by a crack generated on an internal defect associated with low applied stress values.

For a mechanical part to be certified, it should be assessed whether its mechanical, optical or thermal properties satisfy service requirements. Fatigue is one of the critical properties of functional materials, particularly in the aviation industry, where new materials, such as alloys, fibre-reinforced composites and additively manufactured alloys, dominate increasingly. This trend puts a heavy burden on fatigue characterisation, which is expensive and time-consuming. However, recent developments in artificial intelligence offer novel methods to decrease the test load cost-effectively. Hence, this literature survey first summarises predominant fatigue models both theoretical and numerical, and then covers and classifies recent studies (2000–2023) using recent machine learning techniques. Copyright © 2023 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

ASME 2022 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, IMECE 2022 -- 30 October 2022 through 3 November 2022 -- 186577, The aviation industry demands innovation in new materials and processes which can demonstrate high performance with minimum weight. Strength-to-weight ratio (STR) is the key metric that drives the value justification in this demand stream. However, aviation's test and certification procedures are time-consuming, expensive, and heavily regulated. This study proposes a Digital Twin (DT) framework to address the time and high costs of mechanical testing procedures in the aviation industry. The proposed DT utilizes new Machine Learning (ML) techniques such as Transfer Learning (TL). Hence, a proof-of-concept study using TL in the Aluminum material group has been demonstrated. The promising results revealed that it was possible to reduce the test load of new material to 40% without any significant error. Copyright © 2022 by ASME., The authors are thankful for the valuable advice of Assoc.Prof. Ersin Bahceci throughout this study.

This study reports the variability of the fatigue strength of specimens manufactured by the laser powder bed fusion process with respect to their location on the build plate. Specimens from the right-hand and left-hand halves of the build plate were tested under high cycle fatigue. Comparison of the fatigue data suggests that the specimens manufactured on the right-hand half of the build plate have a higher fatigue strength than those manufactured on the left-hand half. One reason for the observed discrepancy in fatigue strength was the higher accumulation of spattered powder particles on the left-hand side as compared to the right-hand side of the build plate. These spattered particles are oxidised, and form defects such as inclusions within the specimen. © 2021 The Author(s)

Structural elements of ships are subjected to a high number of cyclic loads, which are critical to fatigue life. Especially for ultra-large container ships the cutting of thick steel plates with high finishing quality and good fatigue life is important, e.g. located at openings in walls and decks of ships. This study presents a series of fatigue tests with 50 mm thick S355 specimens that are thermally gas cut on different shipyards. The obtained stress-life (S-N) curve contains significant horizontal scatter which often occurs for specimens that spend a high number of cycles on crack initiation. However, it is found that both the local stress concentrations and the origin of failure affect the number of load cycles significantly. Accounting for local stress concentrations provides an explanation for the initially encountered scatter in the S-N curves and indicates possible limitations of the nominal stress approach for thermal cut edges., QC 20221125

This study aims to understand crack opening-closing behavior on pre-fatigued welded joints repaired by High Frequency Mechanical Impact (HFMI). Detailed rat-hole specimen models inserting different depths of rectangle slit in the weld toes to simulate initial cracks were used in the HFMI treatment simulation. Induced compressive residual stress, change of slit geometry, and opening-closing behavior of the slit after HFMI treatment simulation were investigated numerically. The amount of induced compressive residual stress around the slit tip is reduced when slit depth becomes larger, and slit size of about 0.4 mm remains when the slit depth is 2.0 mm. The opening-closing behavior of HFMI treated slit was examined based on change of strains along the slit face. The slit is opened from the bottom side prior to its treated surface. Additionally, the crack opening-closing behavior was investigated experimentally using pre-fatigued out-of-plane gusset welded joints repaired by impact crack closure retrofit treatment. Phased array ultrasonic testing system was used to examine the change of echo height from cracks. It could be concluded that similar behavior as the numerical investigation is observed. From both investigations, experimentally and numerically, the behavior on pre-fatigue welded joints repaired by HFMI could be studied successfully., QC 20221109

The use of fibre reinforced concrete (FRC) elements without traditional reinforcement is increasing in applications for which the structure is exposed to cyclic loadings, such as pavements, bridge deck overlays and offshore structures. Cyclic loads produce tensile stresses that can lead to crack initiation and propagation, and thus compromising the mechanical performance and durability that may bring about noncompliance with service or limit state requirements. The loss of performance owe to material fatigue-induced strength degradation might be significantly accelerated in cracked cross-sections. This contribution presents the results and outcomes derived from an experimental program on the flexural fatigue behaviour of pre-cracked fibre reinforced concrete carried out on notched 600x150x150 mm beams. The evolution of the crack opening displacement and other design-sensitive parameters were monitored and analysed. The understanding of the damage propagation is the basis for the proposal of a design-oriented constitutive model, which is meant to be used for predicting the fatigue life in cracking-allowed concrete structures designed to be subjected to fatigue-inducing loads. The constitutive model was calibrated for a content (9 kg/m3) of a specific type of macrosynthetic fibre and considering different fatigue load levels., Postprint (author's final draft)

In this study, to evaluate the influence of grid blast following to the peening process on the fatigue strength improvement, residual stress measurement and fatigue tests have been conducted. Examined peening processes were UIT, PPP and HP with ICR apparatus. For the residual stress measurement, plate and on-bead specimens made of JIS-SM400, SBHS400, SBHS500 and SBHS700 were used, and X-ray diffraction method was applied to the measurement. The results concluded that the differences in the compressive residual stress distribution in the vicinity of peened area with and without blast are not so significant. For the fatigue tests, out-of-plane gusset welded joint specimens made of JIS-SM490 and SBHS500 were used. Fatigue tests were conducted under stress ratio R=0.0 and 0.5. Fatigue tests showed that fatigue strength of peened specimens with blast are almost the same as that of peened specimens without blast, and those results were observed independently of steel grade and of peening methods., Part of proceedings: ISBN 9780429279119, QC 20230117

A round-robin study has been carried out within a national project in Sweden with the addition of an international participant, where several industrial partners and universities are participating. The project aims to identify variation and sources of variation in welding production, map scatter in fatigue life estimation, and define and develop concepts to reduce these, in all steps of product development. The participating organisations were asked to carry out fatigue life assessment of welded box structures, which is a component in load-carrying structures. The estimations of fatigue life have also been compared with fatigue test results. Detailed drawings, loads and material data were also given to the participants. The participants were supposed to use assessment methods based on global and local stresses using the design codes or recommendations they currently use in-house. Differences were identified between both methods and participants using the same codes/recommendations. Applicability and conditions from the cases in the codes were also identified to be differently evaluated between the participants. It could be concluded that for the applied cases the nominal stress method often overestimated the fatigue life and had a high scatter in the estimations by different participants. The effective notch method is conservative in comparison to the life of tested components with little scatter between the results derived by the participants., QC 20220118

In this work, the phase-field approach to fracture is extended to model fatigue failure in high- and low-cycle regime. The fracture energy degradation due to the repeated externally applied loads is introduced as a function of a local energy accumulation variable, which takes the structural loading history into account. To this end, a novel definition of the energy accumulation variable is proposed, allowing the fracture analysis at monotonic loading without the interference of the fatigue extension, thus making the framework generalised. Moreover, this definition includes the mean load influence of implicitly. The elastoplastic material model with the combined nonlinear isotropic and nonlinear kinematic hardening is introduced to account for cyclic plasticity. The ability of the proposed phenomenological approach to naturally recover main features of fatigue, including Paris law and Wöhler curve under different load ratios is presented through numerical examples and compared with experimental data from the author’s previous work. Physical interpretation of additional fatigue material parameter is explored through the parametric study. © 2021, The Author(s).

The results of tests under monotonically increasing load and cyclic compression load are often analysed by means of probabilistic methods. Although there is a considerable scattering in the results, especially in the number of cycles to failure, the cause of these cannot be completely explained. The imperfections of the specimens tested are among the causes of this scattering mentioned in the literature. Based on a round robin test the influence of HPC and UHPC production and specimen preparation techniques on the mean values of the compressive strengths, number of cycles to failure and data scattering have been evaluated. The main findings of the study are that the production techniques have an influence on the compressive strength, however, do not affect the mean number of cycles to failure. Moreover, the accurate preparation of the specimens has a positive influence on the compressive strength and the scattering of the results of both compression and cyclic load tests. The mean number of cycles to failure of HPC specimens is not influenced by the preparation techniques, whereas the polishing technique may have a positive influence on the mean number of cycles to failure of UHPC specimens. © 2021, The Author(s).

Accurate knowledge of the plastic zone of fatigue cracks is a very direct and effective way to quantify the damage of components subjected to cyclic loads. In this work, we propose an ultra-fine experimental characterisation of the plastic zone based on Vickers micro-indentations. The methodology is applied to different compact tension (CT) specimens made of aluminium alloy 2024-T351 subjected to increasing stress intensity factors. The experimental work and sensitivity analysis showed that polishing the surface to #3 mu m surface finish and applying a 25 g-force load for 15 s produced the best results in terms of resolution and quality of the data. The methodology allowed the size and shape of both the cyclic and the monotonic plastic zones to be visualised through 2D contour maps. Comparison with Westergaard's analytical model indicates that the methodology, in general, overestimates the plastic zone. Comparison with S355 low carbon steel suggests that the methodology works best for alloys exhibiting a high strain hardening ratio.

Accurate knowledge of the plastic zone of fatigue cracks is a very direct and effective way to quantify the damage of components subjected to cyclic loads. In this work, we propose an ultra-fine experimental characterisation of the plastic zone based on Vickers micro-indentations. The methodology is applied to different compact tension (CT) specimens made of aluminium alloy 2024-T351 subjected to increasing stress intensity factors. The experimental work and sensitivity analysis showed that polishing the surface to #3 mu m surface finish and applying a 25 g-force load for 15 s produced the best results in terms of resolution and quality of the data. The methodology allowed the size and shape of both the cyclic and the monotonic plastic zones to be visualised through 2D contour maps. Comparison with Westergaard's analytical model indicates that the methodology, in general, overestimates the plastic zone. Comparison with S355 low carbon steel suggests that the methodology works best for alloys exhibiting a high strain hardening ratio.

Accurate knowledge of the plastic zone of fatigue cracks is a very direct and effective way to quantify the damage of components subjected to cyclic loads. In this work, we propose an ultra-fine experimental characterisation of the plastic zone based on Vickers micro-indentations. The methodology is applied to different compact tension (CT) specimens made of aluminium alloy 2024-T351 subjected to increasing stress intensity factors. The experimental work and sensitivity analysis showed that polishing the surface to #3 mu m surface finish and applying a 25 g-force load for 15 s produced the best results in terms of resolution and quality of the data. The methodology allowed the size and shape of both the cyclic and the monotonic plastic zones to be visualised through 2D contour maps. Comparison with Westergaard's analytical model indicates that the methodology, in general, overestimates the plastic zone. Comparison with S355 low carbon steel suggests that the methodology works best for alloys exhibiting a high strain hardening ratio.

Demanding environmental legislation and improve performance specifications requires increasing fatigue strength for the engine components that are made of lamellar graphite iron (LGI). Components design, metallurgy and casting conditions define the microstructure formation and mechanical properties. The graphite inclusions embedded in the metallic matrix acting as defects and have a detrimental effect on the fatigue strength of LGI. The cooling conditions determine the coarseness of the microstructure and also have, a great impact on the fatigue resistance. The experimental material was an LGI alloy produced with three different solidification times. A fully reversed fatigue test was performed, and various microstructure features were quantitatively estimated by utilizing the Gumbel's statistics of extremes. The stereological parameter of Hydraulic Diameter of the Inter-dendritic Phase and the graphite Feret size found to be the most suitable microstructure parameters to be correlated with the fatigue limit. The results also indicate the sizeable effect of the solidification time on the fatigue limit. Several other microstructure features that have been reported to influence the tensile strength were also found to be related to the fatigue limit. The obtained endurance ratio ranges from 0.25 to 0.30, a value that is in line with previous investigations.

The remaining useful life (RUL) of electronic modules under the influence of rugged random-vibration and operational conditions is investigated in this paper. The effects of storage conditions and soft failures, caused by the vibrations to solder joints of a printed circuit board (PCB) are analyzed. The RUL is estimated with the help of vibration testing and finite element analysis techniques. Keeping in view the standard and working environmental conditions, the PCB of a power distribution module is subjected to random and sine vibrations. Besides the significance of fatigue damage and RUL estimation of solder joints, caused by storage or operation for a period of five years has not been addressed in existing literature so far. The current study performs the modal analysis to find the natural frequencies, mode shapes, and participation factor ratios of a PCB and its components. These natural frequencies are subsequently verified via comparison with experimental sine sweep results. A random vibration test over the frequency range from 10 Hz to 2000 Hz is also applied for recording the time-to-failure ratio of the PCB. Moreover, the spectrum analysis is performed using the commercial ANSYS software, to assess the acceleration response and the stress power spectral density (PSD) of the critical solder joints. The stress PSD is then used to estimate the random vibration fatigue damage of the solder joint. The calculated fatigue life, based on the modified Miner's rule and the Basquin power-law conform to the actual random vibration testing results., QC 20200630