Application of the Microstructural Finite Element Alternating Method to assess the impact of specimen size and distributions of contact/residual stress fields on fatigue strength

This paper shows an implementation of the Microstructural Finite Element Alternating Method (MFEAM) to calculate fatigue strength of engineering components subjected to complex loading conditions. These conditions include combination of primary cyclic loading and residual stress fields or localised stress distributions due to the contact of two solids. The alternating method uses the finite element method (FEM) to solve the boundary value problem of the un-cracked body, allowing treatment of arbitrary shaped components, in conjunction with a short crack model to account for the interaction of the crack with the microstructural barriers, implemented within the distributed dislocation technique (DDT) to assess the crack problem in an infinite medium. An iterative scheme between the FEM and the DDT solutions is proposed in order to predict the required applied load to propagate the crack in the finite size body. Comparisons of results with reported data in the literature show that the MFEAM can be used effectively to analyse finite size components and that it is capable of capturing the effect of localised stress concentration features on cyclic behaviour.