Fatigue Life Estimation in Complex Geometries and Loadings

Components with complex geometries and loading conditions frequently serve under cyclic loadings. This situation makes the evaluation of fatigue life in mechanical parts a fundamental issue. Particularly, for notched geometries and loadings involving plasticity, the cyclic stress and strain fields should be determined using finite elements models. The difficulties are increased since the constitutive equations of material under cyclic plasticity employed in the finite element codes is still an active research field and simplifications must be assumed always. In this paper a comprehensive study of strain-life method for fatigue estimation is presented. In addition, the difficulties found to establish a reliable methodology are enumerated.