Fatigue life estimation of cold drawn contact wire

To evaluate the bending fatigue characteristics of contact wire, a stroke-based bending fatigue tester on contact wire has been developed by Kang et al. But this tester is too cumbersome and complicated. This paper is investigated with a new fatigue life estimation method based on Juvinall’s method for estimation of S-N curve, which is widely used in steel structure, in order to estimate the bending S-N curve of cold drawn contact wire. First, the ultimate tensile strength and the axial tension fatigue test was performed with standard specimens, and the bending fatigue life for the cold drawn contact wire structure was predicted by using an improved S-N curve prediction method. Finally, the tested bending fatigue life of the structure was compared with the fatigue life estimated by the new method. As the result, the predicted bending S-N curve of the contact wire agreed fairly well with the experimental bending fatigue lives using the S-N curve and ultimate tensile strength of cold drawn material.