Notches without Notch Stresses: An Application of Biological Optimization Mechanisms on Engineering Components 2001-01-3252

Quite a few of the failures in engineering components are caused by stress concentrations located in notches. A reduction of these notch stresses will result in high fatigue resistance of a component. This is obtained by modifying the shape of the notch by applying a design rule which is based on the axiom of uniform stress. Using a combination of latter axiom and the finite element method, an optimization tool has been developed, which is used optimize the shape of notches. In this paper an extract of a parameter study will be presented, which compares several shoulder fillets of a shaft, which was subjected to bending, concerning the stress reduction obtained by the fillets.