Current understanding of ultra-high cycle fatigue

The fatigue life of numerous aerospace, locomotive, automotive and biomedical structures may go beyond 108 cycles. Determination of long life fatigue behavior becomes extremely important for better understanding and design of the components and structures. Initially, before the invention of ultrasonic fatigue testing, most of the engineering materials were supposed to exhibit fatigue life up to 107 cycles or less. This paper reviews current understanding of some fundamental aspects on the development of accelerated fatigue testing method and its application in ultra-high cycle fatigue, crack initiation and growth mechanisms of internal fracture, S-N diagram, fatigue limit and life prediction, etc. (C) 2012 The Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.