Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
TOPIC
1. Introduction
2. Details of the types of failure in materials
2.1 Ductile failure
2.2 Brittle failure
2.3 Fatigue failure
3. How fatigue failure initiated from the point of physical behaviour
3.1 Crystallographic aspects
3.2 Crack initiation at inclusions
3.3 Small cracks, crack growth barriers, thresholds
3.4 Number of crack nuclei
3.5 Surface effects
4. How fatigue failure initiated from the point of physical microstructure
4.1 Fatigue failure initiated from the point of microstructure
4.2 Fatigue crack stages and fatigue crack propagation
5. Recommendation and discussions on some measure to prevent fatigue failure
6. Discussion
7. Conclusion
8. References
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1.0 INTRODUCTION
The major types of failures to be encountered in materials are ductile, brittle and fatigue
failures.
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Ductile
period of repeated stress cycling. It is the single largest cause of failure (approximately 90%)
of metallic materials, and polymers and ceramics are also at risk to this type of failure.
Failure usually start on the surface of an object at some discontinuity or imperfection in the
surface. This is the crack beginning. The crack propagates to a critical size without any
evidence of plastic deformation in the part. Once the crack reaches a critical size, the part
fails by sudden fracture. A main problem with fatigue is that it is dominated by design.
Although it is possible to assess the inherent fatigue resistance of a material, the effects of
stress-raisers such as surface irregularities and changes in cross-section, as well as the crucial
area of jointing ( welded) can be a major problem. Some factors that affect fatigue life is,
design factors, surface treatments, size effects, and environmental effects.
Design Factors Geometric discontinuities provide areas for higher stress concentrations that
are more susceptible to fatigue.
Surface Treatments The quality of a surface finish determines the number and size of
imperfections on the surface.
Size effects- The size of an object affects its fatigue. Larger objects have lower fatigue
strengths
Environmental effects- Temperature and corrosion may play are role in fatigue failure.
Constrained parts that are subject to fluctuating temperatures and repeated thermal
In case of fatigue life, it is split into a crack initiation period and a crack growth
period. The initiation period is supposed to include some microcrack growth, but the fatigue
cracks are still too small to be visible. Then, the crack is growing until complete failure.
Furthermore, it is technically consider the crack initiation and crack growth periods
separately due to the several practical conditions that have a large inuence on the crack
initiation period, but a limited inuence or no inuence at all on the crack growth period.
For case of fatigue failure, it is consists of crystallographic nature of the material, crack
initiation at inclusions, crack growth barriers, small cracks, thresholds, number of crack
nuclei and surface effects.
The initial growth of a microcrack shows a tendency to grow along a slip band. In this
case, it must be expected that the crystallography of a material has some inuence on the
mechanistic behavior during the initiation period. The crystallographic properties vary from
one material to another. Thus, the initial microcracking depends on the material. A lot of
aspects of crystallographic are type of crystal lattice, elastic anisotropy, allotropy, slip
systems, ease of cross slip, and also grain size and shape.
STAGE 1
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(a) static deformation (b) fatigue deformation leading to surface notch (intrusion) (c ) fatigue
deformation leading to slip-band extrusion
STAGE 2
Figure 13: Showing how intrusions and extrusions can develop if slip occurs on different
planes during the tension and compression portions of loading.
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Appearance and disappearance of slip bands at a various points of the hysteresis loop of the
first cycle. (low-cycle pull-push fatigue of aluminium alloy)
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To prevent fatigue, the stress in the material must not exceed a specified endurance or
fatigue limit. This value is determine from S-N diagram as the maximum stress the material
can resist when subjected to a specified number of cycles of loading. In order to specify a
safe strength for a metallic material under repeated loading, it is necessary to determine a
limit below which no evidence of failure can be detected after applying a load for specified
number of cycle. This limiting stress is called the endurance or fatigue limit. Using a testing
machine for this purpose a series of specimen are each subjected to a specified stress and
cycled to failure. The results are plotted as a graph representing the stress S (or ) on the
vertical axis and the number of cycle-to-failure N on the horizontal axis. This graph is called
an S-N diagram or stress-cycle diagram.
6.0 DISCUSSION
Three basic factors are necessary to make fatigue cracks to initiate. First, large enough
variation or fluctuation with loading pattern must contain minimum and maximum peak
values. The reverse loading cycle must be sufficiently large for fatigue crack initiation even
though the peak values can be in tension or compression. Secondly, the peak stress levels
must be of sufficiently high enough to initiate the crack. Crack initiation will not exist if the
peak stresses are too low. Third, sufficient large number of cycles of the applied stress must
be experienced by the material. The number of cycles required to initiate and grow a crack is
largely are depend on the repeatedly maximum value of cycles.
Beside of these three factors, there are other variables that prone to fatigue failure
such as stress concentration, corrosion, temperature, overload, metallurgical structure, and
residual stresses. The surface condition of the material being experienced will have an effect
on its fatigue life when fatigue cracks generally initiate at a surface. The level and number of
stress concentrations on the surface is directly related to surface roughness. Thus, it is
important variable in fatigue failure. The crack is likely to nucleate if higher stress
concentration on the material. Smooth surfaces increase the time of crack nucleation.
Besides, fatigue life can be decrease if the material is in notches, scratches, and other stress
risers. Surface residual stress also has tremendous effect on fatigue life. Compressive residual
stresses from machining, cold working, heat treating will oppose a tensile load and therefore,
lower the amplitude of cyclic loading and decrease the failure.
To reduce or eliminate fatigue failure, redesign the parts can be done which requires
thorough education and supervised experience in structural engineering, mechanical
engineering, or materials science. There are four examples that keep the life assurance of the
parts which the parts must be design to keep below threshold of fatigue limit, inspection must
be done on the part periodically for cracks and to replace the part once a crack exceeds a
critical length, design safe-line design for a fixed life parts after which the user is instructed
to replace the part with a new one and design in with no single point of failure, thus, when
any one part completely fails, it does not lead to other failure and compromise the entire
system.
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7.0 CONCLUSION
Based on the characteristics of material fatigue failure, we can conclude that three
basic factors that promote the crack to initiate are large variation or fluctuation in loading
pattern, large peak stress applied on the material and sufficient large number of cycles
experienced by the material. There are also other factors that affect fatigue failure on the
material such as temperature, material type, quality, crack closure, residual stresses cause by
welding, casting, and drilling, and etc. Fatigue failure can be prevent by careful attention to
detail at the design stage to ensure that cyclic stresses are sufficiently low to achieve the
required endurance. The material parts can be changed to improve fatigue life which the parts
can be made from better fatigue rated metals. Complete replacement and redesign of parts
can also reduce the fatigue failure of the materials.
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8.0 REFERENCES
1.
2.
Metal Fatigue, Frost N E, Marsh K J, & Pook L P, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974.
3.
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