Application of Computational Material Testing Based on Damage Mechanics to Fatigue Life Prediction

The method of computational material testing based on damage mechanics, which was previously proposed by Toi and Hirose, has been extended to take into account the difference in damage effect on tensile and compressive material behaviors and in plastic damage evolution under monotonic and repeated loading. The proposed method has been identified for aluminum 6061-T 6 and steel for rails. The identified simulator has been applied to the low-cycle fatigue life prediction of aluminum under repeated tension/compression as well as a steel beam under repeated three-point bending by the locally coupled approach using the three-dimensional finite element structural analysis and the proposed computational material testing. The validity of the present method for computational fatigue life prediction has been demonstrated by the comparison of calculated results and corresponding experimental results.