Issue 33

A. Carpinteri et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 33 (2015) 376-381; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.33.41 378 2 6'',6'' 6'',6'' 0 2 0 2 ( , ) max max S d                           (5) being  a counterclockwise rotation about the w -axis. In order to reduce the multiaxial stress state to an equivalent unixial stress state, we propose to determine an equivalent PSD function through the following linear combination: , 1 3 ,3 6 ,6 , 1 af eq af S S S                   (6) F ATIGUE LIFE EVALUATION FOR RANDOM LOADING et us consider the equivalent PSD function related to an equivalent unixial stress state, that is, to a one- dimensional stochastic process. In such a case, the expected fatigue damage per unit time,   E D , may be evaluated by employing the following linear cumulative damage rule:   1 0 ( ) k a a E D C s p s ds      (7) being a  and ( ) a p s the expected rate of occurrence and the marginal amplitude distribution of the counted equivalent stress cycles, respectively, whereas k and C are the parameters of the normal stress S-N curve. Note that damage estimation depends on the algorithm used to count loading cycles, that is, it is related to the method adopted to estimate the marginal density ( ) a p s . Let us consider the Rain-Flow Counting (RFC) procedure [15]. For RFC methods, an analytical solution for ( ) a p s is not available in the literature and, therefore, Tovo and Benasciutti [11] addressed the problem of the RFC damage estimation as the search for the proper intermediate value between the lower and the upper bounds of   RFC E D . By taking as counting variable an equivalent uniaxial stress having the PSD function eq S proposed in Eq.(6), the expected fatigue damage   RFC E D and the fatigue life cal T are hereafter evaluated. In particular, by considering a critical damage equal to the unity, the calculated fatigue life, cal T , is:   1 cal RFC T E D  (8) E XPERIMENTAL APPLICATIONS he criterion proposed is hereafter applied to some results of fatigue tests on round specimens made of 10HNAP steel, subjected to a combination of random proportional bending and torsion [12]. Such a steel presents a fine- grained ferritic-pearlitic structure, and its mechanical properties are as follows: tensile strength m R = 566 MPa, yield stress e R = 418 MPa, Young modulus E = 215 GPa, Poisson ratio  = 0.29. The adopted fatigue properties are: normal stress fatigue limit (under fully reversed bending) af  = 358.0 MPa at 6 0 1.282 10 N   cycles [12], shear stress fatigue limit (under fully reversed torsion) af  = 182.0 MPa at 6 0 1.282 10 N   cycles [12], inverse slope of normal stress S-N curve (under push-pull) k = 9.82 [4] (for af  = 358.0 MPa at 6 0 1.282 10 N   cycles C = 1.54(10) 31 MPa 9.82. ). Stationary and ergodic random loading applied to the above specimens presents zero expected value, normal probability distribution and wide-band frequency spectrum (0-60 Hz). The high-cycle fatigue tests here examined are related to two combinations of proportional torsional, ( ) T M t , and bending, ( ) B M t , moments, namely: 21 specimens for / 8    , and 14 specimens for / 4    (Fig. 1). For each specimen, the fatigue life T exp is experimentally determined. L T