Crack Initiation Fatigue — Data, Analysis, Trends and Estimation

From the first documentation of fatigue by Albert (1829), through the recognition of a cyclic stress versus life relationship by Bauschinger (1886), to the understanding of plastic strain versus life considerations by Coffin and Manson (1955), there has been a steady growth in the ability to understand and use fatigue design principles. Morrow and his colleagues, have been instrumental in further upgrading the state-of-the-art by presenting techniques for the application of strain-controlled fatigue analysis. One handicap which still remains is the availability of validated, reliable data on materials.

This paper presents a summary of fatigue properties for steels common to the ground vehicle industry and their literature references. There is discussion of several errors which can occur by applying statistical analysis or accepting reported fatigue properties without a critical review of the results. Techniques are shown for estimating the fatigue properties when no data exists or as one step in the validation process for statistically determined or reported data.