Repeated stress can be quite fatiguing!

We have talked about safety, examined stress concentrations and how they can bring things close to their breaking point, but what about stresses below the strength of a material?

Just as people can suffer a burnout from repeated stress over time, materials and structures can also fail due to fatigue when subjected to repeated levels of stress below the strength of the material/structure. This means that the design for static strength is not enough! So, let’s take a closer look at how we can deal with this phenomenon of fatigue in engineering design.