Fatigue failure:

Fatigue failure is generally defined as time delayed fracture under cyclic loading. Example of parts in which fatigue failure are common are transmission shafts, connecting rods, gears, vehicle suspension springs and ball bearings.

Example: To understand the phenomena of fatigue failure, let us suppose that , there is a wire of 2 to 3mm diameter and we want to cut it into two pieces without any device like hacksaw.
There are two ways to do it: A + B A+

B(i) Shear the wire (ii) Bending and unbending the wire

The first method of shearing the wire is very difficult. However the wire can be easily cut into two pieces by simply alternate bending and unbending of the wire. Let us consider two diametrically opposite points A and B on the surface of the wire. As shown in figure when the wire is bent , A is subjected to tensile stresses while B to compressive stresses. When the wire is unbent, there is compressive stress at A and tensile stress at B. Thus there is a complete reversal of stresses at points A and B during the same cycle due to alternate bending and unbending.

This is a fatigue failure and the magnitude of stress required to fracture is very low.

History of Fatigue failure:

Fatigue failure first noticed in 1800 when railroad-car axles began failing after only limited time in service Rankine in 1843, published a paper On the Causes of Unexpected breakage of Journals of Railway axles, he postulated that the material had crystallized and become brittle due to the fluctuating stress.

A German engineer August Wohler, made the first scientific investigation on fatigue failure by testing axles in the laboratory under fully reversed loading. He published his findings in 1870s and discovered the existence of an endurance limit for steels (a stress level that would be tolerable for millions of cycles of fully reversed stress.

Types of Cyclic Stresses:

Fluctuating or Alternating Stresses Repeated Stresses Reversed Stresses

Fluctuating or Alternating Stresses:

Sinusoidal behavior w.r.t time. Fluctuates between maximum and minimum limits. Stress can be tensile or compressive or partly tensile and partly compressive.

Repeated Stresses:
Sinusoidal behavior w.r.t time. Fluctuates between zero and some maximum value Minimum stress is zero in this case.

Fully Reversed Stresses: Sinusoidal behavior w.r.t time. Fluctuates between minimum and some maximum value Mean stress is zero in this case.

1 m ( m ax m in ) Mean Stress 2 1 a ( m ax m in ) Stress Amplitude Alternating Component 2

m in R Stress Ratio m ax a A Amplitude Ratio m m ax m in Stress Range

Mechanism of Fatigue failure:

Crack Initiation Stage Crack Propagation Stage Fracture

Crack Initiation stage: Assume that the material is a ductile metal and as manufactured has no cracks present but has the usual collection of particles, inclusions etc. At a microscopic scale, metals are not homogeneous and isotropic. Assume further that there are some regions of geometric stress concentrations (notches i.e. any geometrical contour that increases local stress) in locations of significant time varying stress that contains a tensile component.

 As the stresses oscillate local yielding may occur due to the stress concentration ,even though the nominal stress in the section is well below the yield strength of the material. The localized plastic yielding causes distortion and create slip bands (region of intense deformation due to shear motion) along the crystal boundaries of the material. As the stress cycles, additional slip bands occur and coalesce into microscopic cracks. Even in the absence of a notch , the same mechanism operates as long as the yield strength is exceeded somewhere in the material. In this case, preexisting voids or inclusions serve as stress raisers to start the crack. Less ductile materials do not have the same ability to yield as ductile ones and tend to develop cracks more rapidly i.e. they are more notch sensitive Brittle materials , especially, do not yield and skip to initiation stage and proceed directly to crack propagation stage.

Crack propagation stage: Once a crack is established , the mechanism of fracture mechanics as discussed before becomes operable. 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. When the stress cycles to a compressive regime, to zero, or to a sufficient lower tensile stress, respectively, 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 strength to above the tensile yield at the crack tip. Thus, the crack growth is due to tensile stress and the crack grows along planes normal to the maximum tensile stress.

 It is due to this reason that fatigue failures are considered to be due to tensile stress, even though shear stresses start the process in ductile materials as described above. Cyclic stresses that are always compressive will not cause crack growth, as they tend to close the crack. The crack propagation growth rate is very small, on the order of 10^-8 to 10^-4 inch per cycle., but this adds up over a large no. of cycles. Figure below shows the striations on the cracked surface of a failed Aluminum specimen, due to each stress cycle along with a representation of the stress cycle pattern that failed it.
Another mechanism for crack propagations is Corrosion fatigue ( Fatigue due to cyclic loading in a corrosive environment. Crack grows at fast rate in this case)

Fracture: The crack will continue to grow as long as the cyclic tensile stresses and/or the corrosion factors of sufficient severity are present. At some point, the crack size grows large enough to raise the stress intensity factor K at the crack tip to the level of materials fracture toughness Kc Thus, sudden failure occurs instantaneously on the next tensile stress-cycle.

The increase in value of fracture toughness due to increase in crack width is more common in dynamic loading conditions.

The increase in value of fracture toughness due to increase in the nominal stress ( or load P) is more common in static loading.

The result is same: sudden and catastrophic failure

 Examination with the naked eye of parts failed by fatigue show a typical pattern as shown in figure. There is a region emanating from the site of the original micro crack that appears burnished and a separate region that appears dull and rough, looking like a brittle fracture.

 The burnished region was the crack and often shows beachmarks, so-called because they resemble ripples left on the sand by retreating waves. (different from striations which cannot be seen by naked eye) The beach marks are due to starting and stopping of the crack growth and they surround the origin of the crack, usually at a notch or internal stress-raiser. The brittle like failure zone is the potion that failed suddenly when the crack reached its size limit.

Fatigue failure Models:

Stress life Approach Strain- Life Approach LEFM Approach

Stress-Life Approach:

A stress based model seeks to determine an endurance limit or fatigue strength for the material It is used for High Cycle Fatigue operations. The design goal is to keep the local stresses and local strains in the elastic region so that no local yielding occurs to initiate a crack.

Endurance Limit Or Fatigue Strength :

The first question arise to our mind that What is an Endurance limit. The answer to this question was given by R.R. Moore . He performed several tests on a Rotating Beam Fatigue Testing Machine to define the endurance limit.

Principle:
In a rotating beam machine the standard test specimen is subjected to a constant bending moment as shown in Figure. The beam of circular cross-section is subjected to a constant bending moment Mb

Under the action of bending moment, tensile stresses are induced in the upper half of the beam and compressive stresses in the lower half.. Let us consider a point A on the surface of the beam and find out the stresses at this point for one revolution of the beam. Initially point A occupies position A1 in the central horizontal plane with zero stress. When the beam is rotated through 90, it occupies position A2 where it is subjected to maximum tensile stress t When the beam is further rotated through 90, A will occupy the position A3 in the central plane with zero stress. A further rotation of 90 will bring point A to A4 . At this point the beam is subjected to maximum compressive stress c.

It is observed that the variation in stresses at point A is completely reversed stress and one stress cycle is complete in one revolution. The stress amplitude of this cycle is given by b M b y I S f increased or decreased by increasing or decreasing the bending moment.

and can be

 A schematic diagram of the machine is as shown in figure The specimen acts as a rotating beam and subjected to a completely reversed stress cycle. (rotated by means of an electric motor) A constant bending moment is applied. Changing the bending moment by addition or removal of weights can vary the stress amplitude. The no. of revolutions of the beam or stress cycles required for failure of the beam is recorded on a revolution counter.

The first test is performed at a stress some what less than the ultimate tensile strength of the material. The second test is performed at a stress level less than used in the first and the process is continued.

 In each test two readings are taken: Stress amplitude or Fatigue strength (Sf) and the No. of stress cycles (N). The results are then plotted on an S-N diagram. Each point on the S-N diagram represents a failure point.

S-N Diagram or Wohler Diagram: The results of the rotating beam machine fatigue test are then plotted as shown in figure: