Fatigue

Course subject(s) 4. Aerospace Engineering

The video below explains the principle of Fatigue.

Fatigue

Summary

In material science, fatigue is the weakening of a material caused by repeatedly applied loads. Because of this cyclic loading, a failure can occur below the maximum applied load. Three stages of fatigue failure can be identified:

1. Large cycles create initial microscopic cracks, which grow into macroscopic cracks.
2. Development macroscopic crack each cycle until a critical crack length
3. Macroscopic crack development cannot sustain the peak load (critical crack length), and failure (break) occurs.

Creative Commons License
Forensic Engineering: Learning from failures by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/forensic-enginee…earning-failures/.
Back to top