Fatigue Crack Initiation and Growth Analysis for Structures

This paper presents a summary of the recent developments in fatigue analysis. It is pointed out that fatigue is a consequence of cyclic plasticity and that local stress and strain provide the parameters for fatigue damage analysis. Fatigue analysis of structural components is discussed and the similitude requirements to enable life predictions on the basis of laboratory data from small specimens are elaborated upon. As fatigue consists of crack nucleation and propagation, the problem of crack growth prediction is briefly reviewed as well. The paper closes with some examples of application of the analysis techniques to weldments.