Fatigue of structures in mechanical vibratory environment. From mission profiling to fatigue life prediction.

The durability of components operating in a mechanical vibratory environment is usually validated on shaker rigs, using an accelerated simplified test derived from mission profiling and test synthesis process. The basis of this method is damage equivalence, the accelerated test leading to the same fatigue damage content as that observed in real service conditions. Numerical simulation can help optimizing this process, allowing verifying that the synthetic test is realistic, and giving the damage distribution based on real material behaviour laws. The complete approach will be described in this paper and illustrated by some real applications. Extension of classical spectral methods to confined plasticity is also presented with laboratory experimental validation. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.