Fatigue life prediction method of notched specimen based on the critical plane

The critical plane approach is applied to prediction fatigue life of notched specimen. Stress and strain of notched specimen can be accounted using elastic-plastic finite element method. Two kinds of damage parameters to describe tensile-mode cracking and shear-mode cracking on arbitrary plane are calculated. The largest damage parameters are determined, and using these damage parameters the fatigue lives of tensile-mode cracking and shear-mode cracking are predicted. Smaller of both is regarded as fatigue lives. So a fatigue life prediction method of notched specimen is obtained. Based on it the fatigue life of SAE1045 steel notched specimen are predicted and compared with the test results, the agreement is found to be good indeed.