PREDICTION OF BENDING FATIGUE BEHAVIOUR BY THE REFERENCE STRESS APPROACH

Abstract— A technique is presented for prediction of low-cycle fatigue behaviour under bending conditions from the knowledge of uniaxial fatigue data. The technique utilizes the reference stress approach used in the analysis of creeping components. The results enable determination of nominal elastic bending stress in terms of the observed saturation stress amplitude in an uniaxial fatigue test conducted at a reference value of strain amplitude. The reference parameters are determined for beams with both rectangular and circular cross-sections. The predictions of fatigue bending behaviour are in excellent agreement with closed form solutions reported recently. The merits of this alternative approach lie in its potential applicability to other structural situations once their reference uniaxial parameters are determined. Since the reference parameters are nearly the same for both creep and fatigue, the approach can be a useful experimental tool for relating creep-fatigue interaction effects in structural components with uniaxial creep-fatigue tests conducted under the reference conditions.