Models for Estimating the Durability of Repeated Impacts

Many components from industry are subjected to repeated impacts, or in some cases these impacts can appear as additional loads. Repeated impacts define a fatigue phenomenon known under the name of Impact Fatigue. Because the strain rate changes the material characteristics it is to expect that the material properties at impact fatigue to be different in regard to those obtained at non-impact fatigue. First studies at repeated impacts were made at the middle of 19th Century, but the progress in this field is not as fast as non-impact fatigue, due to experimental difficulties and the lake of standards for impact fatigue tests. This paper presents a classification of repeated impact tests, and starting from this a series of parameters used for durability estimation will be analyzed. The high number of parameters used by different authors creates difficulties in comparison the different laboratories results. The importance of the shape and dimensions of specimens, and the stiffness of bearing are highlighted. In order to avoid these influences the authors proposed an experimental technique, based on testing of Charpy specimens, in similar conditions as single impact test. The paper presents a series of results obtained for additional impacts overlapped to a cyclic load.