Development of an Object-Oriented Fatigue Tool

A general-purpose object-oriented fatigue tool set has been designed and implemented that can serve not only as a stand-alone code for preliminary design studies, but also as a foundation for highly complex industrial ‘in-house’ fatigue codes. Due to their programming structure, these tools may easily be modified to include additional fatigue prediction methods. Three component libraries have been created to address three topics in fatigue analysis: (1) fatigue material property definition; (2) basic fatigue calculations; and (3) cumulative damage calculations. The initial programming framework has been supplemented, demonstrating the expandability of the libraries. The component libraries have been incorporated into three programs to verify their capabilities and demonstrate their use.