Lecture 2: Failure Modes &

History of Fatigue

MIME 4320/5320: Fatigue of Materials and Structures

Meysam Haghshenas, PhD
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Toledo

Spring 2024
MECHANISMS OF FAILURE
If failure is considered as change in desired performance*- which could involve
changes in properties and/or shape; then failure can occur by many
mechanisms as below.

Mechanisms / Methods by which a material can FAIL

Creep Chemical / Physical

Fatigue Electro-chemical degradation
Plastic Fracture degradation
deformation
Microstructural
Twinning changes
Wear
Slip Twinning
Corrosion Erosion
Phase transformations
Oxidation
Grain growth

Particle coarsening
* Beyond a certain limit
 Excess deformation – elastic, or yielding (i.e. onset of
plasticity)
 Excess deformation by yielding is probably the most commonly studied
failure mode.
 Failure by excess deformation may also be elastic such as in rotating
machinery where seizure can occur.

 Ductile fracture
 Ductile fracture involves significant plasticity.
 It is associated with high-energy absorption with fracture.
 MECHANICAL FAILURE MODES (CONT’D)

 Brittle fracture
 Brittle fracture contains little plasticity.
 It involves low energy absorption.

 Impact or dynamic loading

 Can cause excess deformation or fracture.
 Impact or dynamic loading conditions that create high strain rates in
metals tend to cause lower toughness and ductility.

 Creep
 Can cause excess deformation or fracture.
 In metals it is most predominant at elevated temperatures.
 Example: gas turbine engine blades due to centrifugal forces.
 MECHANICAL FAILURE MODES (CONT’D)

 Wear
 Can occur at any temperature and include many possible
failure mechanisms.
 Dominant in roller or taper bearings and in gear teeth surfaces.

 Buckling
 Buckling failure can be induced by external loading or by
thermal conditions.
 Can involve elastic or plastic instabilities.
 Most dominant in columns and thin sheets subjected to
compressive loads.
 MECHANICAL FAILURE MODES (CONT’D)

 Corrosion, hydrogen embrittlement, neutron

irradiation (Not mechanical failure modes, but usually interact with
mechanical aspects)
 Corrosion by itself involves pitting and crack nucleation.
 Hydrogen embrittlement is most susceptible in high strength steels and
can lead to brittle fracture.
 Stress corrosion cracking (environmental assisted
cracking)
 Crack growth can occur due to interaction with applied and/or residual
stresses and the corrosive environment.
 This interaction is called stress corrosion cracking, SCC, or
environmental assisted cracking, EAC.
 MECHANICAL FAILURE MODES (CONT’D)

 Corrosive environments can range from severe attack with

automobile engine exhaust and saltwater exposure, to essentially
no attack, in vacuum or inert gas.

 The interaction of load, time and environment along with material

selection, geometry, processing, and residual stresses (?) create a
wide range of possible failure modes in all fields of engineering.

Residual stresses are stresses that remain in a solid material after the original cause of
the stresses has been removed.
 MECHANICAL FAILURE MODES (CONT’D)

Fatigue

 Fatigue failure is due to repeated loading.

 At least half of all mechanical failures are due to fatigue.

o 50% to 90% of all mechanical failures are fatigue failures.

 They include simple items such as door springs and electric light
bulbs to complex components and structures involving ground
vehicles, ships, aircraft and human body implants.
o automobile steering linkage, engine connecting rods, ship propeller
shafts, pressurized airplane fuselage, landing gears and hip replacement
prostheses.
 THE DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF FATIGUE

 Fatigue crack nucleation

 Fatigue crack growth
 Constant or variable amplitude loading
 Uniaxial/Multiaxial loading
 Corrosion fatigue
 Fretting fatigue
 Creep-fatigue
 Isothermal
 Thermo-mechanical
 Combinations of the above
 WHAT IS FATIGUE?

• A form of failure that occurs in structures

subjected to dynamic and fluctuating
stresses
• bridges, aircraft, and machine
components.

 Failure occurs at a stress level

considerably lower than the tensile or yield
strength for a static load.
 Occurs after a lengthy period of repeated
stress cycling - material becomes “Tired”
 Occurs in metals and polymers but rarely in
ceramics.
WHAT IS FATIGUE?
METAL FATIGUE IN THE JET ENGINE
(APRIL 2018)

National Transportation
Safety Board

Southwest Flight 1380: Boeing 737 (New York to Dallas)

WHAT HAPPENED?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5628503/Investigators-say-Southwest-engine-missing-fan-
blade-showed-signs-metal-fatigue.html
Wednesday, October 28 (2009), The high-strength steel rod that snapped on the
East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge suffered from “fatigue
failure” exacerbated by previous-day’s high winds.
IMPORTANCE OF FATIGUE
CONSIDERATIONS IN DESIGN

 Fatigue failures occur in every field of engineering.

 For example, they can involve:
 thermal/mechanical fatigue failure in electrical circuit boards involving
electrical engineers,
 bridges involving civil engineers,
 automobiles involving mechanical engineers,
 farm tractors involving agricultural engineers,
 aircraft involving aeronautical engineers,
 heart valve implants involving biomedical engineers,
 pressure vessels involving chemical engineers, and
 nuclear piping involving nuclear engineers.
Fatigue-induced component failures in modern industries and the current
theoretical approaches at various length scales.
 MECHANICAL FAILURE MODES

 Mechanical failures involve a complex interaction of load,

time, and environment (i.e., temperature and corrosion).

 Loads may be monotonic, steady, variable, uniaxial or multiaxial.

 The loading duration may range from centuries to years, as in steel

bridges, or to seconds or milliseconds, as in firing a handgun.

 Temperatures can vary from cryogenic with rocket motor fuels, to

over a thousand degrees Celsius, with gas turbine engines.
Temperatures may be isothermal or variable.
TYPES OF LOAD

1. Steady load : A load is said to be a dead or steady load, when it

does not change in magnitude or direction (e.g., mass).
2. Variable load: A load is said to be a live or variable load, when it
changes continually.
3. Shock loads : A load is said to be a suddenly applied or shock
load, when it is suddenly applied or removed.
4. Impact load : A load is said to be an impact load, when it is
applied with some initial velocity.

21
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF
FATIGUE
 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF FATIGUE

 Fatigue of materials is still only partly understood and

what we do know has been developed step by step.

 The first major impact of failures due to repeated

stresses involved the railway industry in the 1840s,
where railroad axles failed regularly at shoulders.

 The word "fatigue" was introduced in the 1840s and

1850s to describe failures occurring from repeated
stresses.
• People first started investigating fatigue phenomena
after the train crash in Versailles (1842).
• 55 passengers were killed caused by derailing.
 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF FATIGUE (CONT’D)

 In Germany during the 1850s and 1860s

August Wöhler performed many fatigue tests
on locomotive axles. These are the first
systematic investigation of fatigue.

 He showed from stress versus life (S-N)

diagrams how fatigue life decreased with higher
stress amplitudes and that below a certain stress
amplitude, the test specimens did not fracture.
• Cyclic nature of the rotating locomotive axel cases the failure.
• As the train moves, the axel rotates, and the full weight of the loco pushes
down on it.
• On the surface of the axel is a continuous change of T-C-T.
26
 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF FATIGUE
(CONT’D)

 Gerber along with Goodman investigated

the influence of mean stress and proposed
simplified theories concerning mean
stresses.
 Bauschinger in 1886 showed the yield
strength in tension or compression was
reduced after applying a load of the
opposite sign that caused inelastic
deformation.
 In the early 1900s Ewing and Humfrey Johann Bauschinger
used the optical microscope to pursue the
study of fatigue mechanisms.
 1903 - EWING AND HUMFREY

Cyclic deformation leads

to the development of slip
bands and fatigue cracks.

N = 1,000 N = 2,000

Nf = 170,000

N = 10,000 N = 40,000
Ewing and Humfrey (1903) The Fracture of Metals Under Repeated Alterations of Stress,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, A, Vol 221, 241-253 28
 19TH CENTURY

1829 Albert Repeated Loads

1839 Poncelet “fatigue”
1843 Rankine Stress Concentrations
1860 Wohler Systematic Investigations
1886 Baushinger Cyclic Deformation
1890 Goodman Mean Stresses
1903 Ewing & Humfrey Fatigue Mechanisms

29
 20TH CENTURY

1920 Griffith Fracture Mechanics

1945 Miner Cumulative Damage
1954 Coffin & Manson Plastic Strains
1961 Paris Crack Growth
1963 Peterson Strain-Life Method
1967 Endo Cycle Counting
 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF FATIGUE
(CONTINUED)

 In 1920 Griffith published the

results of his theoretical
calculations and experiments on
brittle fracture using glass.

 He found the strength of glass

depended on the size of
microscopic cracks.

 By this classical pioneering

work on the importance of
cracks Griffith developed the
basis for fracture mechanics.
 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF FATIGUE
(CONT'D)

 During the 1980s and 1990s

many researchers were
investigating the complex
problem of multiaxial fatigue.
 The small crack problem was noted
during this time period and many
workers attempted to understand the
behavior.
 Interest in fatigue of electronic
materials increased along with
significant research in thermo-
mechanical fatigue, TMF. TMF
1990’S FINITE ELEMENT
 2000’s

• Integrated Systems
• Gigacycle Fatigue
• Accelerated fatigue testing using ultrasonic fatigue testing
at 20 kHz, which completes 109 cycles in one day, unlike
the 3–4 months needed for conventional fatigue testing
• Micro/nano Fatigue
 MICRO/ NANO FATIGUE

Takashima and Higo, “Fatigue and Fracture of a Ni-P Amorphous Alloy Thin Film on the Micrometer Scale”,
Fatigue and Fracture of Engineering Materials and Structures, Vol. 28, No. 8, 2005, 703-710
 SCIENTISTS WITH SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL
CONTRIBUTUONS TO THE FIELD OF FATIGUE

 August Wöhler (1819-1914).

 John Goodman (1862-1935).
 Johann Bauschinger (1833-1893).  S. S. Manson (1919).
 Herbert J. Gough (1890-1965).  Louis F. Coffin Jr. (1917).
 Herbert F. Moore (1875-1960).  Timothy H. Topper (1936).
 Jesse B. Kommers (1884-1966).  JoDean Morrow (1929).
 Alan A. Griffith (1893-1963).  Paul C. Paris (1930).
 Bernard P. Haigh (1884-1941).  Jacobus (Jaap) Schijve (1927).
 John Otto Almen (1886-1973).  Wolf Elber (1941).
 Keith J. Miller (1932).
 Heinz Neuber (1906-1989).
 Rudolph E. Peterson (1901-1982).
 George R. lrwin (1907-1998).
Waloddi Weibull (1887-1979).
Biographical sketches are provided

at the end of Chapter 1.