In materials science, fatigue is the progressive and localized structural damage that occurs when a material is

subjected to cyclic loading. The nominal maximum stress values are less than the ultimate tensile stress limit,
and may be below the yield stress limit of the material.

Fatigue occurs when a material is subjected to repeated loading and unloading. If the loads are above a certain
threshold, microscopic cracks will begin to form at the stress concentrators such as the surface, persistent slip
bands (PSBs), and grain interfaces.[1]Eventually a crack will reach a critical size, and the structure will suddenly
fracture. The shape of the structure will significantly affect the fatigue life; square holes or sharp corners will lead
to elevated local stresses where fatigue cracks can initiate. Round holes and smooth transitions or fillets are
therefore important to increase the fatigue strength of the structure

Fatigue life[edit]
ASTM defines fatigue life, Nf, as the number of stress cycles of a specified character that a specimen sustains
before failure of a specified nature occurs.[2]

One method to predict fatigue life of materials is the Uniform Material Law (UML).[3] UML was developed for
fatigue life prediction of aluminum andtitanium alloys by the end of 20th century and extended to high-strength
steels[4] and cast iron.[5] For some materials, there is a theoretical value for stress amplitude below which the
material will not fail for any number of cycles, called a fatigue limit, endurance limit, or fatigue strength.[6]

Characteristics of fatigue[edit]

Fracture of an aluminium crank arm. Dark area of striations: slow crack growth. Bright granular area: sudden fracture.

In metal alloys, when there are no macroscopic or microscopic discontinuities, the process starts
withdislocation movements, eventually forming persistent slip bands that nucleate short cracks.
Macroscopic and microscopic discontinuities as well as component design features which cause stress
concentration (keyways, sharp changes of direction etc.) are the preferred location for starting the fatigue
process.
Fatigue is a stochastic process, often showing considerable scatter even in controlled environments.
Fatigue is usually associated with tensile stresses but fatigue cracks have been reported due to
compressive loads.[7]
The greater the applied stress range, the shorter the life.
Fatigue life scatter tends to increase for longer fatigue lives.
Damage is cumulative. Materials do not recover when rested.
Fatigue life is influenced by a variety of factors, such as temperature, surface finish, microstructure,
presence of oxidizing or inert chemicals, residual stresses, contact (fretting), etc.
Some materials (e.g., some steel and titanium alloys) exhibit a theoretical fatigue limit below which
continued loading does not lead to structural failure.
 In recent years, researchers (see, for example, the work of Bathias, Murakami, and Stanzl-Tschegg) have
found that failures occur below the theoretical fatigue limit at very high fatigue lives (109 to 1010 cycles). An
ultrasonic resonance technique is used in these experiments with frequencies around 1020 kHz.[citation needed]
High cycle fatigue strength (about 103 to 108 cycles) can be described by stress-based parameters. A load-
controlled servo-hydraulic test rig is commonly used in these tests, with frequencies of around 2050 Hz.
Other sorts of machineslike resonant magnetic machinescan also be used, achieving frequencies up to
250 Hz.
Low cycle fatigue (typically less than 103 cycles) is associated with widespread plasticity in metals; thus, a
strain-based parameter should be used for fatigue life prediction in metals and alloys. Testing is conducted
with constant strain amplitudes typically at 0.015 Hz.
Timeline of early fatigue research history[edit]

1837: Wilhelm Albert publishes the first article on fatigue. He devised a test machine for conveyor chains
used in the Clausthal mines.[8]
1839: Jean-Victor Poncelet describes metals as being tired in his lectures at the military school at Metz.
1842: William John Macquorn Rankine recognises the importance of stress concentrations in his
investigation of railroad axle failures. TheVersailles train crash was caused by axle fatigue.[9]
1843: Joseph Glynn reports on fatigue of axle on locomotive tender. He identifies the keyway as the crack
origin.
1848: Railway Inspectorate report one of the first tyre failures, probably from a rivet hole in tread of railway
carriage wheel. It was likely a fatigue failure.
1849: Eaton Hodgkinson is granted a small sum of money to report to the UK Parliament on his work
in ascertaining by direct experiment, the effects of continued changes of load upon iron structures and to
what extent they could be loaded without danger to their ultimate security.
1854: Braithwaite reports on common service fatigue failures and coins the term fatigue.[10]
1860: Systematic fatigue testing undertaken by Sir William Fairbairn and August Whler.
1870: Whler summarises his work on railroad axles. He concludes that cyclic stress range is more
important than peak stress and introduces the concept of endurance limit.[8]

Micrographs showing how surface fatigue cracks grow as material is further cycled. From Ewing & Humfrey (1903)

1903: Sir James Alfred Ewing demonstrates the origin of fatigue failure in microscopic cracks.
1910: O. H. Basquin proposes a log-log relationship for SN curves, using Whler's test data.
1945: A. M. Miner popularises A. Palmgren's (1924) linear damage hypothesis as a practical design tool.
 1954: L. F. Coffin and S. S. Manson explain fatigue crack-growth in terms of plastic strain in the tip of
cracks.
1961: P. C. Paris proposes methods for predicting the rate of growth of individual fatigue cracks in the face
of initial scepticism and popular defence of Miner's phenomenological approach.
1968: Tatsuo Endo and M. Matsuishi devise the rainflow-counting algorithm and enable the reliable
application of Miner's rule to random loadings.[11]
1970: W. Elber elucidates the mechanisms and importance of crack closure in slowing the growth of a
fatigue crack due to the wedging effect of plastic deformation left behind the tip of the crack.
High-cycle fatigue[edit]
Historically, most attention has focused on situations that require more than 10 4 cycles to failure where stress is
low and deformation is primarily elastic.

S-N curve[edit]
In high-cycle fatigue situations, materials performance is commonly characterized by an S-N curve, also known
as a Whler curve . This is a graph of the magnitude of a cyclic stress (S) against the logarithmic scale of cycles
to failure (N).

S-N curves are derived from tests on samples of the material to be characterized (often called coupons) where a
regular sinusoidal stress is applied by a testing machine which also counts the number of cycles to failure. This
process is sometimes known as coupon testing. Each coupon test generates a point on the plot though in some
cases there is a runout where the time to failure exceeds that available for the test (see censoring). Analysis of
fatigue data requires techniques from statistics, especially survival analysis and linear regression.

The progression of the S-N curve can be influenced by many factors such as corrosion, temperature, and the
presence of notches. The Goodman-Lineis a method to estimate the influence of the mean stress on the fatigue
strength.

Probabilistic nature of fatigue[edit]

As coupons sampled from a homogeneous frame will manifest variation in their number of cycles to failure, the S-
N curve should more properly be an S-N-P curve capturing the probability of failure after a given number of
cycles of a certain stress. Probability distributions that are common in data analysis and in design against fatigue
include the lognormal distribution, extreme value distribution, BirnbaumSaunders distribution, and Weibull
distribution.

Complex loadings[edit]

Spectrum loading

In practice, a mechanical part is exposed to a complex, often random, sequence of loads, large and small. In
order to assess the safe life of such a part:

1. Reduce the complex loading to a series of simple cyclic loadings using a technique such as rainflow
analysis;
2. Create a histogram of cyclic stress from the rainflow analysis to form a fatigue damage spectrum;
3. For each stress level, calculate the degree of cumulative damage incurred from the S-N curve; and
4. Combine the individual contributions using an algorithm such as Miner's rule.
For multiaxial loading[edit]
Since S-N curves are typically generated for uniaxial loading, some equivalence rule is needed whenever the
loading is multiaxial. For simple, proportional loading histories, Sines rule may be applied. For more complex
situations, such as nonproportional loading, Critical plane analysis must be applied.

Miner's rule[edit]
In 1945, M. A. Miner popularised a rule that had first been proposed by A. Palmgren in 1924. The rule, variously
called Miner's rule or the Palmgren-Miner linear damage hypothesis, states that where there are k different stress
magnitudes in a spectrum, Si (1 i k), each contributing ni(Si) cycles, then if Ni(Si) is the number of cycles to
failure of a constant stress reversal Si, failure occurs when:

C is experimentally found to be between 0.7 and 2.2. Usually for design purposes, C is assumed to be 1.
This can be thought of as assessing what proportion of life is consumed by stress reversal at each
magnitude then forming a linear combination of their aggregate.

Though Miner's rule is a useful approximation in many circumstances, it has several major limitations:

1. It fails to recognise the probabilistic nature of fatigue and there is no simple way to relate life
predicted by the rule with the characteristics of a probability distribution. Industry analysts often
use design curves, adjusted to account for scatter, to calculate Ni(Si).
2. There is sometimes an effect in the order in which the reversals occur. In some circumstances,
cycles of low stress followed by high stress cause more damage than would be predicted by the
rule. It does not consider the effect of overload or high stress which may result in a compressive
 residual stress. High stress followed by low stress may have less damage due to the presence of
compressive residual stress.
Paris' Relationship[edit]

Typical fatigue crack growth rate graph

In Fracture mechanics, Anderson, Gomez and Paris derived relationships for the stage II crack growth with
cycles N, in terms of the cyclical component K of the Stress Intensity Factor K[12]

where a is the crack length and m is typically in the range 3 to 5 (for metals).

This relationship was later modified (by Forman, 1967 [13]) to make better allowance for the mean stress,
by introducing a factor depending on (1-R) where R = min stress/max stress, in the denominator.

Goodman relation[edit]
In the presence of stresses superimposed on the cyclic loading, the Goodman relation can be used to
estimate a failure condition. It plots stress amplitude against mean stress with the fatigue limit and
theultimate tensile strength of the material as the two extremes. Alternative failure criteria include
Soderberg and Gerber.[14]

Low-cycle fatigue[edit]
Where the stress is high enough for plastic deformation to occur, the account in terms of stress is less
useful and the strain in the material offers a simpler description. Low-cycle fatigue is usually
characterised by the Coffin-Manson relation (published independently by L. F. Coffin in 1954 and S. S.
Manson 1953):

-where:

p /2 is the plastic strain amplitude;

f' is an empirical constant known as the fatigue ductility coefficient, the failure strain for a
single reversal;
2N is the number of reversals to failure (N cycles);
c is an empirical constant known as the fatigue ductility exponent, commonly ranging from -
0.5 to -0.7 for metals in time independent fatigue. Slopes can be considerably steeper in the
presence of creep or environmental interactions.
A similar relationship for materials such as Zirconium, used in the nuclear industry. [15]
Fatigue and fracture mechanics[edit]
The account above is purely empirical and, though it allows life prediction and design assurance,
life improvement or design optimisation can be enhanced using Fracture mechanics. It can be
developed in four stages.

1. Crack nucleation;
2. Stage I crack-growth;
3. Stage II crack-growth; and
4. Ultimate ductile failure.
Factors that affect fatigue-life[edit]

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Cyclic stress state: Depending on the complexity of the geometry and the loading, one or
more properties of the stress state need to be considered, such as stress amplitude, mean
stress, biaxiality, in-phase or out-of-phase shear stress, and load sequence,
Geometry: Notches and variation in cross section throughout a part lead to stress
concentrations where fatigue cracks initiate.
Surface quality: Surface roughness cause microscopic stress concentrations that lower the
fatigue strength. Compressive residual stresses can be introduced in the surface by e.g. shot
peening to increase fatigue life. Such techniques for producing surface stress are often
referred to aspeening, whatever the mechanism used to produce the stress. Low plasticity
burnishing, laser peening, and ultrasonic impact treatment can also produce this surface
compressive stress and can increase the fatigue life of the component. This improvement is
normally observed only for high-cycle fatigue.

Material Type: Fatigue life, as well as the behavior during cyclic loading, varies widely for
different materials, e.g. composites and polymers differ markedly from metals.

Residual stresses: Welding, cutting, casting, and other manufacturing processes involving
heat or deformation can produce high levels of tensileresidual stress, which decreases the
fatigue strength.

Size and distribution of internal defects: Casting defects such as gas porosity, non-metallic
inclusions and shrinkage voids can significantly reduce fatigue strength.

Air or Vacuum: Certain materials like Metals are more prone to fatigue in air than in a
vacuum. Depending upon the level of humidity and temperature, the lifetime for metals such
as aluminium or iron might be as much as 5 to 10 times greater. This is mostly due to the
effect of the oxygen and water vapour in the air which will aggressively attack the material and
so encourage the propagation of cracks. Other environments such as oil or seawater may
perform better than air but they will also be worse than a vacuum. [16]

Direction of loading: For non-isotropic materials, fatigue strength depends on the direction
of the principal stress.

Grain size: For most metals, smaller grains yield longer fatigue lives, however, the presence
of surface defects or scratches will have a greater influence than in a coarse grained alloy.
 Environment: Environmental conditions can cause erosion, corrosion, or gas-phase
embrittlement, which all affect fatigue life. Corrosion fatigue is a problem encountered in many
aggressive environments.

Temperature: Extreme high or low temperatures can decrease fatigue strength.

Crack Closure: Crack closure is a phenomenon in fatigue loading, during which the crack will
tend to remain in a closed position even though some external tensile force is acting on the
material. During this process the crack will open only at stress above a particular crack
opening stress. This is due to several factors such as plastic deformation or phase
transformation during crack propagation, corrosion of crack surfaces, presence of fluids in
crack, or roughness at cracked surfaces etc. this will provide a longer fatigue life for the
material than expected, by slowing the crack growth rate
Design against fatigue[edit]
Dependable design against fatigue-failure requires thorough education and supervised experience
in structural engineering, mechanical engineering, ormaterials science. There are four principal
approaches to life assurance for mechanical parts that display increasing degrees of
sophistication:[17]

1. Design to keep stress below threshold of fatigue limit (infinite lifetime concept);
2. fail-safe, graceful degradation, and fault-tolerant design: Instruct the user to replace parts
when they fail. Design in such a way that there is nosingle point of failure, and so that
when any one part completely fails, it does no harm, and does not lead to catastrophic
failure of the entire system.
3. Safe-life design: Design (conservatively) for a fixed life after which the user is instructed
to replace the part with a new one (a so-called lifed part, finite lifetime concept, or "safe-
life" design practice); planned obsolescence and disposable product are variants that
design for a fixed life after which the user is instructed to replace the entire device;
4. damage tolerant design: Instruct the user to inspect the part periodically for cracks and to
replace the part once a crack exceeds a critical length. This approach usually uses the
technologies of nondestructive testing and requires an accurate prediction of the rate of
crack-growth between inspections. The designer sets some aircraft maintenance
checks schedule frequent enough that parts are replaced while the crack is still in the
"slow growth" phase. This is often referred to as damage tolerant design or "retirement-
for-cause".
Stopping fatigue[edit]
Fatigue cracks that have begun to propagate can sometimes be stopped by drilling holes,
called drill stops, in the path of the fatigue crack.[18] This is not recommended as a general practice
because the hole represents a stress concentration factor which depends on the size of the hole
and geometry, though the hole is typically less of a stress concentration than the removed tip of
the crack. The possibility remains of a new crack starting in the side of the hole. It is always far
better to replace the cracked part entirely.

Material change[edit]
Changes in the materials used in parts can also improve fatigue life. For example, parts can be
made from better fatigue rated metals. Complete replacement and redesign of parts can also
reduce if not eliminate fatigue problems. Thus helicopter rotor blades and propellers in metal are
being replaced by composite equivalents. They are not only lighter, but also much more resistant
to fatigue. They are more expensive, but the extra cost is amply repaid by their greater integrity,
since loss of a rotor blade usually leads to total loss of the aircraft. A similar argument has been
made for replacement of metal fuselages, wings and tails of aircraft. [19]
 Example of a HFMI treated steel highway bridge to avoid fatigue along the weld transition.

High Frequency Mechanical Impact (HFMI) treatment of welds[edit]

The durability and life of dynamically loaded, welded steel structures are determined often by the
welds, particular by the weld transitions. By selective treatment of weld transitions with the High
Frequency Mechanical Impact (HFMI) treatment method,[20][21] the durability of many designs can
be increased significantly. This method is universally applicable, requires only a technical
equipment and offers high reproducibility and a high grade of quality control.

Infamous fatigue failures[edit]

Versailles train crash[edit]

Versailles train disaster

Drawing of a fatigue failure in an axle by Joseph Glynn, 1843

Main article: Versailles rail accident

Following the King's fete celebrations at thePalace of Versailles, a train returning to Paris crashed
in May 1842 at Meudon after the leading locomotive broke an axle. The carriages behind piled into
the wrecked engines and caught fire. At least 55 passengers were killed trapped in the carriages,
including the explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville. This accident is known in France as the
"Catastrophe ferroviaire de Meudon". The accident was witnessed by the British locomotive
engineer Joseph Locke and widely reported in Britain. It was discussed extensively by engineers,
who sought an explanation.

The derailment had been the result of a broken locomotive axle. Rankine's investigation of broken
axles in Britain highlighted the importance of stress concentration, and the mechanism of crack
growth with repeated loading. His and other papers suggesting a crack growth mechanism through
repeated stressing, however, were ignored, and fatigue failures occurred at an ever increasing rate
on the expanding railway system. Other spurious theories seemed to be more acceptable, such as
the idea that the metal had somehow "crystallized". The notion was based on the crystalline
appearance of the fast fracture region of the crack surface, but ignored the fact that the metal was
already highly crystalline.

de Havilland Comet[edit]
Main articles: BOAC Flight 781 and South African Airways Flight 201

The recovered (shaded) parts of the wreckage of G-ALYP and the site (arrowed) of the failure

Two de Havilland Comet passenger jets broke up in mid-air and crashed within a few months of
each other in 1954. As a result systematic tests were conducted on a fuselage immersed and
pressurised in a water tank. After the equivalent of 3,000 flights investigators at the Royal Aircraft
Establishment (RAE) were able to conclude that the crash had been due to failure of the pressure
cabin at the forward Automatic Direction Finder window in the roof. This 'window' was in fact one of
two apertures for the aerials of an electronic navigation system in which opaque fibreglass panels
took the place of the window 'glass'. The failure was a result of metal fatigue caused by the
repeated pressurisation and de-pressurisation of the aircraft cabin. Also, the supports around the
windows were riveted, not bonded, as the original specifications for the aircraft had called for. The
problem was exacerbated by the punch rivet construction technique employed. Unlike drill riveting,
the imperfect nature of the hole created by punch riveting caused manufacturing defect cracks
which may have caused the start of fatigue cracks around the rivet.

The fuselage roof fragment of G-ALYPon display in the Science Museum in London, showing the two ADF windows at-

which the initial failure occurred.[22]

The Comet's pressure cabin had been designed to a safety factor comfortably in excess of that
required by British Civil Airworthiness Requirements (2.5 times the cabin proof pressure as
opposed to the requirement of 1.33 times and an ultimate load of 2.0 times the cabin pressure)
and the accident caused a revision in the estimates of the safe loading strength requirements of
airliner pressure cabins.

In addition, it was discovered that the stresses around pressure cabin apertures were considerably
higher than had been anticipated, especially around sharp-cornered cut-outs, such as windows. As
a result, all future jet airliners would feature windows with rounded corners, greatly reducing the
stress concentration. This was a noticeable distinguishing feature of all later models of the Comet.
Investigators from the RAE told a public inquiry that the sharp corners near the Comets' window
openings acted as initiation sites for cracks. The skin of the aircraft was also too thin, and cracks
from manufacturing stresses were present at the corners.

Alexander L. Kielland oil platform capsizing [edit]

Fractures on the right side of the Alexander L. Kielland rig

The Alexander L. Kielland was a Norwegian semi-submersible drilling rig that capsized whilst
working in theEkofisk oil field in March 1980 killing 123 people. The capsizing was the worst
disaster in Norwegian waters since World War II. The rig, located approximately 320 km east
from Dundee, Scotland, was owned by the Stavanger Drilling Company of Norway and was on hire
to the U.S. company Phillips Petroleum at the time of the disaster. In driving rain and mist, early in
the evening of 27 March 1980 more than 200 men were off duty in the accommodation on
the Alexander L. Kielland. The wind was gusting to 40 knots with waves up to 12 m high. The rig
had just been winched away from the Edda production platform. Minutes before 18:30 those on
board felt a 'sharp crack' followed by 'some kind of trembling'. Suddenly the rig heeled over 30
and then stabilised. Five of the six anchor cables had broken, the one remaining cable preventing
the rig from capsizing. The list continued to increase and at 18.53 the remaining anchor cable
snapped and the rig turned upside down.

A year later in March 1981, the investigative report [23] concluded that the rig collapsed owing to a
fatigue crack in one of its six bracings (bracing D-6), which connected the collapsed D-leg to the
rest of the rig. This was traced to a small 6 mm fillet weld which joined a non-load-bearing flange
plate to this D-6 bracing. This flange plate held a sonar device used during drilling operations. The
poor profile of the fillet weld contributed to a reduction in its fatigue strength. Further, the
investigation found considerable amounts of lamellar tearing in the flange plate and cold cracks in
the butt weld. Cold cracks in the welds, increased stress concentrations due to the weakened
flange plate, the poor weld profile, and cyclical stresses (which would be common in the North
Sea), seemed to collectively play a role in the rig's collapse.

Others