Fatigue life assessment of components and structures under multiaxial service loading

The durability analysis of components and structures has progressively become during the last 20 years a main checking point of the design engineering field. Economical constraints have contributed to reduce the weight of structures for standard service loads and moreover shorten the design cycle time. Simulation has been concurrently developed in order to obtain as soon as possible the right finalized prototype. This paper presents a multiaxial fatigue life prediction method that has been implemented in a software installed as a post-processor of the finite element code ABAQUS. The method is based over a critical plane concept where the fatigue damage is assessed on each material plane through the normal and shear stresses that exist on this plane. The emphasis of the method is to yield the fatigue life prediction for any kind of multiaxial variable amplitude stress states history. Two industrial applications are presented. They concern components made of D.D.Q. or high strength steels and underline the future fatigue analysis developments regarding the influence of manufacture on material data.