Fatigue Design

This course deals with fundamental and technical issues associated with designing and maintaining structures that resist failure from cyclic loading. Students will be taught the principles of fatigue testing and analyzing fatigue failures of materials, addressing the questions how fatigue behavior is characterized, how fatigue failure is predicted, which physical mechanisms are responsible for fatigue initiation and propagation in various materials with particular attention to metals and structural alloys, and how such a behavior is related to the microstructure of the material. This course will also introduce key applications of fatigue design in industry including failure analysis, fatigue life calculations and experimental techniques and destructive and non-destructive methods of damage detection and characterization.

Main Topics:

• Cyclic deformation
• Fatigue crack initiation
• Stress-life fatigue behavior
• Strain-life fatigue behavior
• Fracture mechanics and fatigue crack propagation
• Environmental effects

Knowledge :

• Fatigue mechanisms.
• Description of fatigue phenomenon.
• Fatigue life concept.
• Methodology for designing against fatigue.
• Methodology for fatigue-crack-growth analysis.

Skills :

• Capability to use traditional methods for designing mechanical components against fatigue.
• Capability to use crack-growth analysis for life assessment of mechanical components containing cracks and crack-like defects.

General competence:

To be able to evaluate fatigue damage and to design machines and structures against fatigue and to predict the expected life of components in service.

Lectures: Both presentations and blackboard are used in parallel. Some lectures can be performed "digitally". Teaching materials are provided through Blackboard. The purchase of text-books is not necessary for the successful completion of this course though it is encouraged for additional learning. Self-made notes during the lectures are encouraged since the lectures include the material and discussion which are hardly available in textbooks.

Exercises: 11 assignments will be given during the course, of which 10 aim at solving problems and 1 is essay based on self-study of the topic given. 10 approved of total 11 assignments are required to qualify for the exam. The lectures and exercises are in English when students who do not speak Norwegian take the course. If the teaching is given in English the examination papers will be given in English only. In this case the students also have to reply in English.