From generic towards a micromechanical fatigue model.

Abstract: Fatigue life formulas are still based on phenomenological models which adopt simple relations directly from experiments for different loading conditions and use fitted material parameters. The combination of enormous complexity of fatigue damage processes and simple, macro appearance of the formulas (usually power laws), are the source of Generic Fatigue Models (GFM). GFMs rely on minimal, but coherent, micro-details which are independent of the specific micro structure. Such a model has been developed, connecting analytically the S-N power law and endurance stress in terms of statistical strength distributions of material microelements and their neighbors. This paper describes two types of generalizations of the basic GFM: a.) Two level (H-L and L-H) loading, in which a history dependent micro-damage evolution law is proposed, and b.) Multiaxial fatigue response by a simple 2D truss. Emphasize is on minimal parameters and capability of analytical predictions, in which every “material constant” has a physical or micro-geometrical meaning. The theoretical generalizations are compared with experimental data from the literature and show that the predictions are coherent with main experimental features. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]