Damage Models and Durability Prediction for Structural Elements of Transport under Variable Loading

At present, there are two approaches to fatigue life prediction. There is an approach of continuous damaging popular among the Russian scientists and engineers that is based on the crack initiation implicit modelling and the damage determination contributed by each cycle. In this approach, fatigue damage is determined as a fatigue crack occurring and a structural element failure. Another approach is presented with failure mechanics allowing the small crack existence and describing its growth up to the size limit. The present work aims at studying the problem of applicability of the fatigue damage models, which are efficient for standard samples and the simplest structural elements, for complex transport structures subjected to variable amplitude loading, and proposing the joint use of approaches to model fatigue damage, while preliminary describing advantages, disadvantages and assumptions of this approach.