APPLICATION OF THE STRAIN ENERGY DENSITY PARAMETER FOR ESTIMATION OF MULTIAXIAL FATIGUE LIFE OF SINTERED STEELS WITH STRESS CONCENTRATORS

This paper presents fatigue test results of a Fe-Cu sintered alloy (1.5% Cu) and three types of Fe-Cu-Ni sintered alloys (2% Cu, 2.5% Ni). Fe-Cu-Ni sintered alloys were produced under different compaction pressures and sintering temperatures. Round specimens with fillet notches were subjected to a constant amplitude pure bending, pure torsion and a combined in-phase and out-of-phase (delta = 90 degrees) bending with torsion. All results have been described by the criterion of the strain energy density parameter on the critical plane. It was assumed that the fatigue life is influenced by a linear combination of normal and strain energy density parameters with the coefficients that refer to the calculated plane. In particular, it allowed one to compute fatigue lives sufficiently comparable to the experimental ones.