VIRTUAL DESIGN CONCEPTION OF FATIGUE SPECIMEN

1ST ZHAO HUAIRUI Laboratory for Structural Strength Testing(Beijing Jiaotong University),China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment, Engineering Research Center of Structure Reliability and Operation Measurement Technology of Rail Guided Vehicles (Beijing Jiaotong University), Ministry of Education, Beijing 100044 , China 3RDWANG SHENGWU School of Civil and Safety Engineering , Dalian Jiaotong University, Dalian 116028, China 2ND LI QIANG Laboratory for Structural Strength Testing(Beijing Jiaotong University),China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment, Engineering Research Center of Structure Reliability and Operation Measurement Technology of Rail Guided Vehicles (Beijing Jiaotong University), Ministry of Education, Beijing 100044 , China 4THZHU NING Laboratory for Structural Strength Testing(Beijing Jiaotong University),China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment, Engineering Research Center of Structure Reliability and Operation Measurement Technology of Rail Guided Vehicles (Beijing Jiaotong University), Ministry of Education, Beijing 100044 , China

ABSTRACT In fatigue design, the dates from material test are used to describe the components` behavior. As the limitation of theory and method, the strong subjectivity in choosing correction coefficients makes it hard to evaluate the design quantitatively. Based on the finite element and optimal theories, fatigue specimen lying between material and component is put forward. Finally the virtual design method of that specimen is primarily discussed. KEY WORDS

Fatigue, Correction coefficients, Specimen, Virtual design

According to [1], 50% ~90%of structure mechanics failures are caused by fatigue. Now and then accidents caused by fatigue and fracture were reported by media. For example, the most miserable accident of German railway occurred in 1988 leading to 100 deaths and 88 injuries, and the reason of the tragedy is wheel fatigue; On 25 May, 2005, a Boeing 747-200 airplane wrecked shortly after 20 minutes taking off, causing 206 passengers and 19 air crews death, while the reason is still the metal fatigue. Economic Loss from fatigue and fracture is huge. As [1] reported, fracture loss is 119 billion dollars one year, accounting for 4% of Gross National Product, among which vehicles industrys 12.5 billion dollars takes the first place.

Most fatigue Failures show that classical static strength design can replace fatigue design. Belonging to the field of dynamic strength, fatigue failure mode and mechanism are different from those of static failure. With the world railway development towards high speed, heavy haul and light weight, it is very important to adopt fatigue design in rolling stock.
2. COMMONLY USED FATIGUE DESIGN METHOD AND ITS DISADVANTAGES

In the past tens of years, it is the dreams of many scholars and engineering technicians to calculate or predict structures fatigue life and safety factor accurately. However, the accurate and practicable method to calculate fatigue strength and life in engineering has not been formed up to now. Because of the myriads of changes on research object, instability of manufacturing technology and material structure, uncertainty of defects and flaws, Randomness and Complexity of external load, and so on, it is impossible to describe all of these factors in a unified mathematical or physical model. So fatigue tests and methods based on mathematical statistics are inevitable choice. Taking fatigue life analysis as example, any method so far includes three parts[2]: Description of structures fatigue behaviour; Structural Response under fatigue load; Rule of fatigue cumulative damage. Fatigue Properties of Components Structural response under fatigue load

Rule of fatigue cumulative damage

Fatigue strength design Fig.1 Fatigue design strength frame Tests to get fatigue property of structures can bee divided into material tests, parts tests and whole machine tests. Fatigue tests, especially the former two, spends a lot of time, manpower and material resources, so data from material tests is always used to describe the fatigue behaviour of parts or whole machine. The standard, non-notched sample, which may be different in actual shape, size, surface state, working environment and working load, is used in material test. Therefore Fatigue strength reduction factor is used to describe that difference. The reduction factor has many forms, and some common expressions in infinite life design are [3]:
KD = K

KD =

/ 1 K + 1

KD =

/ + 1

(1)

Where K are fatigue notch coefficient; is size coefficient; is surface quality coefficient. After obtaining the fatigue strength reduction factor, we can calculate the parts or whole machines fatigue limit:

1D =

1
KD

(2)

Where -1and -1D are fatigue limits of material and parts (or whole maching ) respectively. As above discussion, formula (2) and (3) can not give accurate difference between -1and -1D. Because of subjective factors, facing the same component, different people with different professional background may give different results. In addition, these subjective factors make it impossible to evaluate the design result quantitatively. So, during new product development and design process, or safety assessment of component in Service, at least some key parts tests should be carried out. However, parts or whole machine tests take a lot of time, manpower and material resources, which is the basic reason why those tests are not widely adopted in engineering. In view of this, this paper puts forward the concept of sample, which approximates the whole machine or part in load field, while lies between material and part sample in size. Then the virtual design method of that specimen is primarily discussed.
3 DESIGN IDEA AND TECHNOLOGY SYSTEM

3.1 THEORETICAL FOUNDATION 3.1.1 Strength locality and stage theory of crack propagation Different from stiffness, strength is one local problem. Locally, the crack(s) initiates, propagates, and finally breaks resulting in the component failure. That is to say, to most components insufficient strength locally is the root of fatigue failure. On the basis of fracture observation, the fatigue failure process is divided into three stages: crack initiation, crack propagation and unstable fracture stage. Unstable fracture suddenly happens, and duration time occupies very small proportion in whole life of the component. Correspondingly, fatigue fracture surface is divided into crack initiation area, crack propagation area and fault area. The proportion of crack propagation area to fault area is determined by the plasticity of component. The more plastic the component is, the bigger that proportion will be. As to the components with excellent plasticity, the size of its crack propagation area looks so trivial in front of the whole size of the component. 3.1.2 Saint-venant theory Saint-Venants principle, named after the French elasticity theorist Jean Claude Barr de Saint-Venant can be stated as saying that [4] "... the strains that can be produced in a body by the application, to a small part of its surface, of a system of forces statically equivalent to zero force and

zero couple, are of negligible magnitude at distances which are large compared with the linear dimensions of the part." The Saint-Venants principle allows elasticians to replace complicated stress distributions or weak boundary conditions into ones that are easier to solve, as long as that boundary is geometrically short. In Fig.2, though Loading Schemes are different, the load field around key location A which is far from the affected zone, is same.

Fig.2 Schematic diagram of Saint-Venants principle[5] 3.2 The concept of sample virtual design and its technical route 3.2.1 The concept of sample virtual design According to 3.1.1, it is the region around key locations that determines the fatigue property of the component. As for two components, as long as the load fields in regions around the key locations are same, their fatigue behaviors will be same. So it is not necessary to design the sample that is just the same with the component in size and loads. Further extension of Saint-Venants principle, the equivalence of the load fields in regions around the key locations can be converted to the equivalence of sub-model, as shown in Fig.3. Accordingly, the theme of sample design is changed into searching the proper shape that meets above equivalent principle, as Fig.4 shows. What is plotted in Fig.4 can be describe with Optimization terms as:

Fig.3 Schematic diagram of sub-model

Fig.4 Description of the design

(3)

where S1+S0 stands for the real shape of the component,. S0 is the key area considering the real failure situation and the influence of Saint-Venants principle. S1is optimization space. Fu (,) is boundary interpolation function of the shape and loads. Sx is optimization variable related to shape, and Px related to load. 3.2.2 Technical route for sample virtual design Driven by above concept, the virtual design method of fatigue sample can be summarized as below: 1) Analyses the full shape component, then get the sub-model shape and FU ( S1 + S 0, P) in cut boundaries taking driving load and key area size into consider. 2) Parametric modeling of the sub-model including the key area S0; 3) Optimize the model with the minimum of FU ( Sx + S 0, Px) FU ( S1 + S 0, P ) as the target function , S1 and Px as optimization variable. 4) If the target value is greater than or equal to e, then go back to 2); else the searching process finishes, as Fig.5 shows. Begin

Full size simulation Type of fail driving load Size of key area

Sub-model simulation

FU(SX+SO,PX)FU(S1,P1)

Y End Fig.5 Technical Route for fatigue specimen virtual design

4. CONCLUSIONS

Data from material fatigue test can not describe the behavior of parts or whole machine accurately, for the uncertainty and complexity of fatigue problem. In addition subjective factors make it hard to evaluate the design result quantitatively. This paper puts forward the concept of sample lying between material sample and part one, and preliminary studies the technical route of its virtual design, which lays a foundation for further study.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This project is supported by National Basic Research Program of China (2007CB714705) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (50875019).
REFERENCES
[1] CHEN Chuanyao. Fatigue and fracture [M].HuaZhongUniversity of Science and Technology Press,2003. [2] YAO Weixing. Fatigue Life Analysis of Structure. [M] National defense industry Press,2003. [3] CHENG Yuren,MIAOLongxiu.Fatigue. [M]Chinese Railway Press,1990 [4] A.E.H. Love, "A treatise on the mathematical theory of elasticity" Cambridge University Press, 1927. [5] XU Zhilun. Elastic Mechanics a short Course[M]. Higher Education Press,2006.