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For the design of thick-walled nodular cast iron components, fatigue assessment, especially in the context of local imperfections in the material, is a challenging task. Not only the cyclic material behavior of the sound baseline material, but also the cyclic behavior of materials with imperfections, such as shrinkages, dross and chunky graphite, needs to be considered during the design process of cast iron components. In addition to this, new materials, such as solid solution strengthened alloys, offer new possibilities in lightweight design, but need to be assessed concerning their fatigue strength and elastic-plastic material behavior. If a safe and reproducible fatigue assessment for any component cannot be performed and a secure usage is therefore not given, the cast components are generally rejected, leading to a loss of additional material, energy and money for recasting the component.

In vehicle design and engineering, the fatigue of materials is a size-dependent phenomenon, which occurs in every safety-relevant component. An inaccurate fatigue assessment, neglecting relevant influencing factors, may therefore either lead to considerable safety risks or to a significant oversizing of the component. Due to the size dependency of the microstructure and the related deformation and fatigue mechanisms, the fatigue life estimation requires an understanding of the cyclic material behavior as well as the damage mechanisms of materials on different scales. In this respect, local strain-based fatigue design concepts are advantageous for the estimation of the fatigue properties of components with arbitrary size and geometry, because the applicable material models allow an implementation of a realistic cyclic material behavior and a relation to different fatigue damage mechanisms in the elastic and the elastic-plastic load regime.

To reduce the weight and to increase the power as well as to enable the utilization of nodular cast iron components, e.g. for wind turbines and heavy industry parts, locally higher stresses need to be withstood by the material. This becomes crucial, when additional overloads influence the structure of thick-walled components causing high local elastic-plastic deformations. In this case, the cyclic, elastic-plastic material behavior and its development under cyclic loading are important points to be considered during component design. To assess the material’s local elastic-plastic material behavior, strain-controlled fatigue tests were performed under alternating loading, Rε = -1, with unnotched specimens removed from cast blocks as well as from a hub and a planet carrier of wind turbines, made of EN-GJS-400-18U-LT, EN-GJS-700-2, ADI-800 and ADI-900.

In a collaborative investigation of ZF Friedrichshafen AG and the Fraunhofer-Institut für Betriebsfestigkeit LBF [1], both constant and variable amplitude fatigue tests were performed on induction-hardened automatic transmission shafts made from Ck 35 mod. steel. The objectives of the project were to evaluate the safety reserves of the shafts and to apply several selected methods to assess fatigue life, to compare these methods and to gain insights for future component developments.

Within the scope of a team work between Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch AG (KKK), Volkswagen AG, Sterling International Technologies Ltd. and the Fraunhofer Institute for Strength of Structures under Operational Conditions (LBF) compressor wheels of aluminium and magnesium investment casting were developed and investigated. Strength and fatigue tests, overspeed and field tests as well as metallographic checks were made in addition to the finite element calculations to optimize the stress under centrifugal forces in an appropriate way for the materials involved. The results and the knowledge gathered are to clarify whether magnesium alloys are an appropriate replacement for the proven standard aluminium alloy for turbochargers.

The fatigue life approach is the main topic of structural durability. Improved methods for the numerical fatigue analysis should be based on experimental results. In some fields of material testing progress in research are very hard to achieve. Especially the regime of amplitudes below the knee point of the SN-curve with a huge number of load cycles to failure is one of these challenges with respect to fatigue tests. With standard testing devices, 108 to 1010 cycles cannot be achieved in a reasonable time span because of their low and limited testing frequencies or their inflexible control systems concerning variable amplitude loading. For this reason, a new piezo based testing facility has been developed by Fraunhofer LBF which is capable to master this challenge. Built up with a high performance piezo actuator and a specially designed high frequency load frame this testing facility enables test frequencies up to 1.000Hz and locking forces of 10kN.

For the development of new components, design engineers today have access to a broad amount of fatigue data, which were obtained from unnotched and notched specimens. These data can be transformed when the conditions of material, strength, geometry, surface and surface layer and loading mode in the fatigue critical areas are taken into account for constant and variable amplitude loading. The procedure of data transferability is discussed for the example of a randomly loaded truck stub axle where the failure criterion is the first detectable crack, and the local equivalent stress/strain and the maximum stressed/strained material volume are considered. In addition, several problems associated with fatigue life assessment under variable amplitude loading are discussed.