Fatigue limit prediction of notched plates using the zero-point effective notch stress method

Abstract

A zero-point effective notch stress method is proposed to predict the fatigue limit of notched plates. The effective stress is the sum of the structural hot-spot stress and the notch hot-spot stress, which are obtained by stress linearization of the overall stress and the non-linear peak stress at a characteristic length d0, respectively. A good agreement with experimental data in the literature can be achieved by the zero-point effective notch stress. The geometry dependence and mesh sensitivity of the proposed method are discussed. Comparing with the TCD, the proposed method can achieve identical prediction accuracy and is only geometry-dependent.