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DESIGN OF MACHINE ELEMENTS:

Dr. Dinesh Kumar
CHAPTER 6:
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Mech. Eng., MNIT Jaipur
FATIGUE FAILURE THEORIES
Few major references are included here. Other references may be found in individual chapters.
1. Norton Robert L., “Machine Design: An Integrated Approach”,
Fourth Edition, Pearson Education Inc., New Jersey, 2011.
2. Shigley J. E. and Mischke C. R., Budynas R. G. and Nisbett K. J.,
“Mechanical Engineering Design“ McGraw Hill, 8th Edition, USA,
2008.
*It is impossible to write better than in the above mentioned references and paraphrasing any statements may lead to loss of technical
meanings /contents of the statements, and hence, many statements are quoted directly from these works.

Introduction Introduction…
• Rankine’s paper (1843) entitled “On the causes of
• Most failures in machinery are due to time-varying unexpected breakage of journals of railway axles”
loads rather than to static loads. postulated that the material had crystallized and
• These failures occur at stress levels significantly become brittle due to the fluctuating stress.
lower than the yield strengths of the materials. • A German engineer, August Wohler made the first
• Thus, using only the static failure theories can lead scientific investigation (Over 12 years) into fatigue
to unsafe design when loads are dynamics. failure by testing axles under fully reversed loading.
• Fatigue was first noticed in 1800s when railroad-car • He published his finding in 1870, which identified the
axles began failing after only limited time in service number of cycles of time varying stress as the culprit
• They were made of ductile steel but exhibited and found the existence of an endurance limit for
sudden, brittle-like failures. steel, ie., a stress level that would be tolerable for
millions of cycles of fully reversed stress

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Introduction… History of Fatigue Failure

• The Wohler (S-N) diagram became the standard
way to characterize the behavior of materials
under dynamic loading

History of Fatigue Failure… Fatigue Loads

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Stress analysis: rotating shaft
 Bending (normal) stress may
vary over time, however, it can
be considered fixed at a
particular load level
 As shaft rotates (at a specific
speed), sections are subjected
to fully reversed bending
stress. See point A: stress
varies from tension to
compression as a function of
time (as shaft rotates)
 Stress variations, at any point
A, may induce fatigue failure
by bending
Stress analysis: rotating shaft
 Torsional shear stress may vary
over time, however, it can be
considered fixed at a particular load
level
 Torsional shear stress varies only
when applied torque (load) changes:
fluctuating stress
 Fluctuations in torsional stress may
induce fatigue failure by shear
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Stress analysis: rotating shaft
 Transversal shear stress may
vary over time, however, it can
be considered fixed at a
particular load level
 As shaft rotates (at a specific
speed), sections are subjected
to repeated transversal shear
stress. See point A: stress
varies from zero to maximum as
a function of time (as shaft
rotates)
 Stress variations, at any point A,
may induce fatigue failure by
shear.
Mechanisms of fatigue failure
Fatigue failures always begin at a crack
• Cracks may be present in raw material used for fabrication
(crystallographic defects; inclusions; etc.)
• Cracks may be introduced during fabrication
• Cracks develop over time due to cyclic loading (&
corrosion)
• Cracks develop around stress concentrations
Shaft failed in fatigue.
Crack initiated at keyway
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Mechanisms of fatigue failure
• While failing by crack, we can have, Crack Initiation,
Propagation and Fracture
• Initiation - If a ductile materials have no cracks, and
material is positively stresses repeatedly, local yielding
causes microcracks to develop
• If there are notches, this will happen faster
• Brittle materials skip this stage and directly proceed to
crack propagation leading to fracture. They are more
notch sensitive
• Propagation – The sharp crack creates stress
concentrations larger than those of the original notch, and
a plastic zone develops at the crack tip each time a tensile
stress opens the crack, blunting its tip and reducing the
effective stress concentration. The crack grows a small
amount.
Mechanisms of fatigue failure
• Corrosion – if the crack is present in a
corrosive environment, the propagation
will happen even in static loading
situation
• The combination of stress and corrosive
environment has a synergistic effect and
the material corrodes more rapidly than
if unstressed.
• Fracture – crack grows and if K > KC the
material fractures
• This can happen either due to crack
propagating to sufficient size, or stress
being more than the material can
handle at that point.
• Parts failed by fatigue loading shows
that crack initiation (at keyway) rippling
and fracturing in a brittle fashion
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Mechanisms of fatigue failure
• Propagation – When the stress cycles
to a compressive-stress regime, to
zero, or to a sufficiently lower tensile
stress, the crack closes, the yielding
momentarily ceases, and the crack
again becomes sharp, but now at its
longer dimension.
• This process continues as long as the
local stress is cycling from below the
tensile yield to above the tensile yield
at the crack tip.
• Thus, crack growth is due to tensile
stress and the crack grows along
planes normal to the maximum
tensile stress.
• Figures shows the striations due to
stress cycles on aluminum at 12000X
Typical Pattern of Fatigue-Failed Component
Burnished i.e.,
Smoothed and bright
Rough and dull
1040 Steel Keyed Shaft Failed in Rotating Bending
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Fatigue Failure Models Fatigue Failure Models

Fatigue regimes
– Low-cycle fatigue (LCF) Strain-life (-N) approach:
– High-cycle fatigue (HCF): when number of cycles, N>103 cycles.
– Gives a reasonable accurate picture of the crack
Fatigue Failure Models initiation stage.
• Stress-Life(S-N) Approach: used in HCF and stress based
model. In this model, we seek to obtain designs in which the – Used when the cyclic load is high enough to cause
maximum cyclic stress induced in the component is lower local yielding,
than the fatigue strength and/or endurance limit of the
material used. – Also, used when cyclic and thermal loads are
• This approach keeps local stresses in notches so low that the considered,
crack initiation stage never begins.
• Oldest and easy to implement. Relevant strength data is – Reasonably accurate in LCF, but most
available. complicated.
• Most empirical and least accurate in defining stress/strain
states in LCF where high stresses are needed to cause local
yielding.

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Fatigue Failure Models
Linear-elastic fracture-mechanics (LEFM) approach:
– Applied to LCF and finite life problems where the
cyclic load is high enough to cause the formation of
crack.
– Best to design and model in the crack propagation
stage.
– Used commonly in predicting useful life of the
cracked parts, in conjunction with NDT.
Measuring Fatigue Failure Criteria…
• Most of the available fatigue-strength
information is for a rotating beam in fully
reversed bending, with less available for
axial loading and still less for torsion, but
it is changing now.
• If no fatigue strength information for the
desired material is available at all, and we
then need a means to estimate a value
from available static strength data.
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Measuring Fatigue Failure Criteria
• Several different testing techniques now exist for
measuring the response of materials to time-
varying stresses and strains.
– Wohler approach on rotated cantilever beam,
– R. R. Moore technique on a simply supported rotating
beam in fully reversed, pure bending, and
– Servo-hydraulically driven axial-testing machines.
• The last one allows much more flexibility in the
patterns of either stress or strain that can be
applied to a test specimen. Strain-based and
fracture-mechanics data as well as stress-based
data can be obtained.
Measuring Fatigue Failure Criteria…
Fully Reversed Stresses
• Can be accomplished with the rotating bending, axial
fatigue, cantilever bending, or torsional fatigue tests
depending on the type of loading desired.
• The rotating bending test is a fully reversed, stress-
based, HCF test that seeks to find the fatigue strength
of the material.
• The axial fatigue test can generate (for any
combination of mean and alternating stresses) similar
fully reversed data to that of the rotating-beam test in
a given material and it can also be used to do strain-
controlled tests.
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Measuring Fatigue Failure Criteria… Rotating-Beam Test

• The cantilever bending test subjects a
nonrotating beam to oscillations in
bending stress.
• It can provide a mean stress as well as a
fully reversed stress.
• The torsion test alternately twists a bar in
opposite directions applying pure shear
R R Moore Fatigue Test
stresses. Specimen for Fatigue Test

Rotating-Beam Test… Rotating-Beam Test…

• This test is run at one particular stress level until
it fails, and the number of cycles to failure and
the applied stress level is recorded.
• This test is repeated with multiple specimens of
the same material loaded at different stress
levels.
• The collected data are then plotted as
normalized failure strength, Sf / Sut against
number of cycles, N, (typically on log-log
coordinates) to obtain an S-N diagram.

Rotating Beam Subjected to Bending Moment (a) Beam, (b) Stress Cycle at Point A

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Rotating-Beam Test… (S-N Curves) Rotating-Beam Test…

Sf=0.9Sut Experimental observations
• A good approximation of complete S-N curve
for steel can be made from tensile test data
under static load
• For steel Se’0.5Sut Sut1400Mpa
Endurance 3
• The 10 -cycle fatigue strength is computed as
“Knee” Limit:
Se’=0.5Sut 90% of Sut.
• Steel with higher strength do not exhibit the
• Material – wrought Iron
• Specimen is un-notched and polished and at 0.3in dia)
Se’0.5Sut relationship
• Some did not fail above 107 cycles

Rotating-Beam Test… Rotating-Beam Test…

Sf vs Sut
• There is a large scatter
band but average
behaviour is a line of
slope 0.5 upto 1379 MPa
• Beyond that level the
Endurance Limit/ Fatigue Strength (uncorrected) higher strength steels’
• For applications requiring < 106 cycles of operation, a endurance limit falls off
fatigue strength Sf , (sometimes also called endurance
strength) can be defined at any N from these data. • So, it is taken as
• The term endurance limit is used to represent the Se’700 MPa
infinite-life strength only for those materials having one. Sut1400Mpa

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Rotating-Beam Test… Experimental observations: materials

Sf vs Sut…. without a “knee”
In the absence of an endurance limit, the fatigue strength at 5 x
• The Fig. also shows the scatter 108 cycles is often used.
bands of fatigue limits for
severely notched specimens
and for specimens in corrosive
environments.
• Materials in corrosive
environments have S-N curves
that continue to fall with
increasing N (i.e., no Knee).
• Later, we will consider these
factors in determining useful,
corrected fatigue strengths for
materials. S–N bands for representative aluminum alloys, including
wrought alloys with Su < 38 kpsi.

S-N Curves for Different Materials

Materials with a “knee” in the S-N curve:
• Many low-strength carbon and alloy steels
• Some stainless steels
• Irons
• Molybdenum alloys
• Titanium alloys, and some polymers
Knee typically appears at nearly 106 cycles
Endurance limit at 106 cycles is typically used

Material without a “knee” in the S-N curve:

• Aluminum, magnesium, copper
• Nickel alloys
• Some stainless steels
• High-strength carbon and alloy steels
• Fatigue strength at 5x108 cycles is typically used

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Axial Fatigue Tests Axial Fatigue Tests…

• Performed on servohydraulic test machine.
• Programmability of these machines allows any
combination of mean and alternating
components of stress to be applied including
fully reversed loading (σm = 0).
• Entire cross section is uniformly stressed in axial
tension/compression rather than a linear stress
distribution.
• Fatigue strengths exhibited in the axial tests are
Fig. 2.1: Axial Fatigue
typically lower than those seen in the rotating Test Specimen
beam test (because of much larger high-stress
field, and actual eccentric loading)

Cantilever Bending Tests… Torsional Fatigue Tests

• Maximum stress in reversed bending are limited • The relationship between
torsional strength and
to top and bottom, whereas maximum bending bending strength in cycling
stress in rotating beam are produced at loading is the same as in
the static case
circumference • Thus, torsional fatigue
strength (or torsional
• A fatigue failure may originate from top/bottom endurance limit) for ductile
surface material is about 0.577
(58%) of the bending
• Hence, Sf in reversed bending is usually slightly fatigue strength(Bending
endurance limit)
greater than that in rotating beam
• Difference is usually small & neglected Note the difference: normalized
A 1–2 plot for completely reversed loading, ductile materials. [Data from Walter
by Sf (shown Sn in Fig.) instead of Sawert, Germany, 1943, for annealed mild steel; and H. J. Gough, “Engineering
Steels under Combined Cyclic and Static Stresses,” J. Appl. Mech., 72: 113–125
F Syt (March 1950).]

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Combined Mean and Alternating Stress Combined Mean and Alternating Stress…
Straight line fit, the Goodman Line (Often
• The presence of a mean-stress component Parabola fit, the Gerber Line used as a design criterion, since it is safer)

has a significant effect on failure.

• Addition of tensile mean component of stress
to the alternating component causes material
failure at lower alternating stresses than
under fully reversed loading.

(a) (b)

Combined Mean and Alternating Stress…

Fracture Mechanics Criteria
• To develop fatigue strength data in terms of FM-
theory, a number of specimens of the same
material are tested to failure at various levels of
cyclical stress range Δσ.
• The test is done in an axial fatigue machine and
the load pattern is usually either repeated or
fluctuating tensile stresses.
• The applied stresses range from σmin to σmax.
• A stress intensity factor range ΔK can be
• Compressive mean stresses have a beneficial effect and tensile calculated for each fluctuating-stress condition
mean stresses are detrimental. from
•This fact provides an opportunity to mitigate the effects of altern-
ating tensile stresses by the deliberate introduction of mean com-
pressive stresses. E.g., by creating residual compressive stress.

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Fracture Mechanics Criteria… Fracture Mechanics Criteria…

Source: Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design

• Notice the effect of the higher stress range in the production of longer cracks at a
particular cycle count. • Paris defined the relationship in region II as:

• The number of cycles N to grow a crack from an initial size ai to a given size af under a
known stress range cycle Δσ and geometry β can be estimated from the Paris equation
parameters as:

Fracture Mechanics Criteria…

• Figure 6-20 shows a
schematic set of da/dN
curves for different levels
of mean stress as defined
by the stress ratio R.
• Fig shows little variation End of Part 1
of the curves in Region II
(crack growth), but shows
significant changes with R
in regions I and III.
• Crack initiation is thus
affected by mean stress
level.

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