Fatigue Analysis of Engineering Structures: State of Development and Achievement

Abstract

Fatigue failure is a phenomenon that often occurs in mechanical structures, especially in components that receive direct cyclic loading, e.g., marine facilities, automobiles, critical infrastructure, reservoirs, turbines, nuclear reactors, and features that work in extreme conditions. Several factors can affect fatigue resistance, including applied material type, environment temperature, microstructure state, residual stress, corrosion, and crack initiation. Accurately estimating fatigue life is critical. A variety of variables must be taken into the calculation to reduce the risk of dangerous failure. In this paper, a series of development and achievement reviews on the relevant phenomena and advanced research related to fatigue assessment is conducted. Consideration of fatigue assessment methodology, e.g., laboratory experiment and numerical calculation, is discussed to summarize relevant effects to characteristics of stress life, strain life, frequency-based, and fracture mechanic approaches. The review also presents the relationship of previous research and its relevance to the development of the recent study. The purpose of this paper is to provide state-of-the-art investigations as well as demonstrate the challenges of uncharted problems.