PSI - Issue 28

C.D.S. Souto et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 28 (2020) 139–145

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Carlos D.S. Souto et al. / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2020) 000–000

Fig. 3: Numerical simulation for stress range determination (elastic maximum principal stresses).

After fatigue testing, in order to obtain points for an S-N curve, the stress ranges are obtained through numerical simulations which replicate the experimental setup, as exemplified in Figure 3. The strain gauge data is used to determine at which number of cycles the rail fails, for example, in Figure 4, this specimen fails at around 325,000 cycles, denoted by a 10% of load reduction which indicates the formation of a crack.

Fig. 4: Strain gauge data (converted to stress for plotting purposes) for specimen 7.