Estimation of Fatigue Life in Al alloy Specimens Using FEA

Acceptable fatigue life assessment of components is desirable for various industries. The fatigue life of a specimen includes the total number of cycles required for crack initiation and the number of cycles required for crack growth. In many industries, such as aerospace or petrochemical and refining industries, due to the high cost of parts, it is necessary for the part to continue to work even after crack initiation. Therefore, to estimate the fatigue life, the fatigue crack propagation should be studied. Experimental fatigue tests are very time consuming and costly. So, it is very important to use finite element software to simulate and study the fatigue crack growth. In this research, with the help of finite element simulation in Abacus software and using the J integral criterion, the growth of fatigue cracks and the estimated life of a sample of 5000 series aluminum alloy was investigated. The results were compared with experimental data and a good agreement was observed.