Evaluating the fatigue life of notched components based on the stress gradient model with variable support effects

Abstract

As the notch location of engineered components suffers from size effect, thereby making it difficult to accurately predict the fatigue life of engineered components. This study briefly analyses the limitations of the traditional relative stress gradient model for analyzing the fatigue life of notched members. Subsequently, a relative stress gradient model with variable support effects is proposed. The fatigue data of various notched specimens with different materials were employed to verify the performance of the proposed model for size effect. The results show that the proposed model has satisfactory predictive performance. Compared with the conventional relative stress gradient model and critical distance method, the proposed model exhibited superior predictive capabilities.

Keywords

• Notch
• Fatigue life
• Size effect
• Relative stress gradient
• Support effect