Assessment of concepts for Fatigue Crack initiation and propagation life prediction

Abstract

Abstract A great variety of fatigue life prediction concepts has evolved during the last decades. Nevertheless, there is a lack of satisfying fundamental theories for the evaluation of fatigue damage under variable amplitude loading; progress has been made, however, in the development of numerical prediction concepts which are backed up by experimental work and are, therefore, used as relative concepts. In the paper, some basic requirements concerning the assessment of fatigue life prediction methods are discussed. A survey on different concepts is given and capabilities and limitations are elucidated by typical results selected from the literature.