FFT_4

Fatigue failure theories and Design against fluctuating load (Contd.)

Designing For High-Cycle Fatigue

Fatigue design situations in HCF regime may be categorized into four basic categories
that can be treated separately, although three of them are just special cases of the
fourth, general case.

Fig.7 shows the four categories in a matrix. The columns define the presence or
absence of a mean stress. The fully reversed case has a zero mean stress and the
fluctuating-stress case has a nonzero mean value. Both have alternating components.
The rows define the presence of applied-stress components on only one, or more than
one axis. The uniaxial case represents simple loading cases such as pure axial loading
or pure bending. The multiaxial case is general and allows applied normal-stress
components on all axes in combination with applied shear stresses on any face of the
stress cube. In reality, the pure loading cases are rare in practice. More often there will
be some combination of multiaxial stresses on machine parts. Both the fully reversed
and fluctuating stress cases are commonly encountered in practice, however.

Fig. 7: Four Categories of Fatigue Design Situations

Cetegory I – Designing for fully reversed uniaxial stresses

Many texts will further subdivide this category into bending loading, axial loading,
and torsional loading and present separate approaches to each. These categories may
be combined into one category by calculating the von Mises effective stress and
comparing it with the corrected bending-fatigue strength of the chosen material. This
eliminates the need to consider pure torsion as a special case. Some common
applications of this category are rotating bending of a shaft that supports a static load,
or reversed torque on a shaft with large, oscillating inertia loads and a mean torque
that is effectively zero compared to those oscillations.

Design Steps for Category I

1. Determine the number of cycles of loading N that the part will experience over
its expected service life.
2. Determine any appropriate geometric stress-concentration factors Kt (or Kts for
shear) at notches in your part’s geometry. Try, of course, to minimize these
through good design. (See FFT_3).

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 
3. Determine its properties of chosen material such as Sut , Se (or S f at the life
required), and q.
4. Convert the geometric stress-concentration factors Kt (or Kts for shear) to
fatigue concentration factors Kf using the material’s notch sensitivity, q.
5. Calculate the nominal, alternating stress amplitudes  anom (or  anom if the load
is pure shear) at critical locations in the part due to the alternating service
loads based on standard stress-analysis techniques and increase them as
necessary with the appropriate fatigue stress-concentration factors (See
FFT_3)
6. Calculate the stress amplitudes for the critical locations based on their states of
applied stress. Note that these contain the effects of stress concentrations.
Calculate the von Mises effective stress for each location of interest.
7. Determine appropriate fatigue strength modification factors for the type of
loading, size of part, surface, etc., as described in FFT_2. Note that the loading
factor Cload will differ based on whether there are axial or bending loads. If the
loading is pure torsion, then the von Mises effective-stress calculation will
convert it to a pseudo-tensile stress and Cload should then be set to 1.
8. Define the corrected fatigue strength Sf at the requisite cycle life N (or the
corrected endurance limit Se for infinite life if appropriate) and a “static”
strength Sm@N = 103 cycles from Eqn. 4 (FFT_2). Create an S-N diagram,
and/or write Eqn. 5 (FFT_2) for the material chosen.
9. Compare the alternating von Mises effective stress* at the most highly stressed
location with the material’s corrected fatigue strength, S taken from the S-N
curve at the desired number of life cycles N. (Note that for infinite-life
situations in which the material has an S-N knee, S = Se.)
10. Calculate a safety factor for the design from the relationship,
Sn
Nf  (13)
a
where Nf is the safety factor in fatigue, Sn is the corrected fatigue strength at
the required number of cycles of life taken from the S-N curve or Eqn. 5
(FFT_2), and a is the largest von Mises alternating stress at any location in
the part, calculated to include all stress concentration effects.
* von Mises Effective Stress is defined as the uniaxial tensile stress that would create
the same distortion energy as is created by the actual combination of applied stresses.
This approach allows us to treat cases of combined, multiaxial tension and shear
stresses as if they were due to pure tensile loading. The von Mises effective stress, σ'
for the three-dimensional case is, from Eqn. (14).

 
 x
2

  y    y   z    z   x   6  xy   yz   zx
2 2 2 2 2
 (14)
2
where  x ,  y , and  z are applied normal stresses in x, y and z directions respectively
while  xy ,  yz , and  zx are applied shear stress in xy, yz and zx plane respectively.
Questions

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1. Solve the example 6-4 in Norton Machine-Design.

2. A component machined from a plate made of steel having Sut = 630 MPa is
shown in Fig. A4_1. It is subjected to a completely reversed axial force of 50
kN. The expected reliability is 90% and the factor of safety is 2. The size
factor is 0.85. Determine the plate thickness t for infinite life.

Fig. A4_1

3. A rotating shaft, subjected to a non-rotating force of 5 kN and simply

Fig. A4_2