A numerical investigation of the high cycle fatigue sensitivity to microstructure and defect.

• Explicit virtual microstructure is introduced to the numerical models. • Different configurations of grain size and morphology are investigated. • Stress-based fatigue criteria combined with two non-local methods are applied. • Kitagawa-Takahashi effect is reproduced and explained via the proposed framework. This study aims at investigating the effect of defect on the high cycle fatigue behavior of polycrystalline aggregates. An explicit virtual microstructure finite element model is created to conduct fatigue simulations. Different stress-based criteria frequently applied in fatigue assessment are tested with a combination of the non-local methods. Two realizations of the non-local method are used and compared. Simulation results are compared to experimental results of 316L. From the parametric simulations, better qualitative understandings on the choice of non-local method as well as its parameters are obtained. The effect of Kitagawa-Takahashi can be reproduced and explained by this proposed framework of microstructure modeling-simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]