Failure Mechanisms and Fatigue Life Prediction of Engineering Structures

Dear Colleagues,

Fatigue caused by constant or time-varying cyclic loading represents one of the most important types of failures to which materials, structural components, and structures are subjected during service life that can finally result in a sudden and unexpected fracture. Fatigue life prediction of materials and structural details can be modeled by deterministic and probabilistic analyses. Fatigue damage in metals generally initiates near the surface and spreads perpendicularly to the loading direction; this behavior is linked to cyclic plasticity and isotropic mechanical properties. On the other hand, composites with a polymer matrix exhibit orthotropic mechanical properties, favoring far more complex fatigue damage than in metallic materials, including matrix cracking, delamination, fiber rupture and failure occurring in a synergic, cumulative and random manner. Normally, fatigue design codes use the S–N curves and Palmgren–Miner linear damage rule for assessing damage accumulation. Fatigue analysis through the use of local approaches, such as stress-, strain-, and energy-based methods, is used to assess the fatigue crack initiation phase. Fracture mechanics approaches are recommended to characterize the fatigue crack propagation phase by taking into account various aspects, such as defect sizes, geometries, material and structural properties, loading history and conditions, accessibility to detail and inspection methods. Reliability methods are also increasingly used in fatigue design and analysis, since, in many cases, there are uncertainties regarding the variables under study. Therefore, researchers and designers have many concerns about the fatigue phenomenon, which makes the subject of high interest to the scientific community.

The aim of this Special Issue is to provide the data, models, and tools necessary to assess the failure mechanisms and fatigue damage calculation of engineering structures and structural components under cyclic loadings, taking into account several environmental conditions, temperature, corrosion, etc., through the use of advanced mathematical, numerical and experimental techniques. Therefore, researchers are invited to provide original research and review articles that seek accurate and efficient failure analysis, fatigue damage evaluation and fatigue design, a fracture-mechanics-based approach, computer-aided structural integrity, etc.

Dr. José A.F.O. Correia
Prof. Shun-Peng Zhu
Dr. Grzegorz Lesiuk
Dr. Haohui Xin
Guest Editors

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