A FCG Model and the Graphical User Interface Under Matlab for Predicting Fatigue Life: Parametric Studies

The focus of this research work was predicting the fatigue life of mechanical components used for industrial and transport systems. To understand how the phenomenon of fatigue occurs in a material, the fatigue crack growth is studied. The purpose of this work was to create a graphical user interface (GUI) under Matlab to allow researchers to conduct the parametric studies of fatigue crack propagation to predict fatigue life. In this work, three models for fatigue crack propagation were used: those of Paris, Walker and Forman in order to study the three parameters: the Paris exponent m, load ratio R and hardness K_IC, respectively. In addition, a novel model FCG was developed to study the influence of the hardening parameters (K′, n′) on fatigue crack propagation. The comparison of the simulation results with those in the literature shows good agreement.