Equivalent fatigue load approach for fatigue design of uncertain structures

Abstract

Industrial structures undergo complex loading, often unsuitable for the design and validation phases of their development. Engineers seek simplified signals to replace them, yet equivalent in terms of fatigue. A general framework for the construction of equivalent fatigue loads is presented, intended to take into account some uncertainty on the structure of interest. The guiding idea is to describe this uncertainty through parameters of the structure model, and then to assure the equivalence of damage or failure behavior over the whole range of expected parameters. The approach is applied in the case of structures undergoing multiple channels of concentrated forces.