Fast computation of critical planes for fatigue life analysis of metals

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to propose an efficient computational strategy for critical plane type approaches dedicated to the fatigue life analysis of metals. The formulation developed consists in determining the critical planes in the space of the strain or stress tensors describing the mechanical history. To the authors’ knowledge, such an approach has never been reported before in the literature. Thus, the new numerical method developed avoids scanning all the possible planes as standard approaches. As shown in the examples proposed, this particularity allows decreasing the CPU time: from 20 days by scanning planes to 10 min for the FEM analysis of a welded structure with the criterion of Fatemi and Socie.