Abstract
Ultrasonic fatigue testing is a recent fatigue methodology that applies
resonant principles to induce cyclic stresses in a modally designed
specimen enabling the application of fatigue damage at very high
frequencies. Its primary purpose is to study fatigue life in the Very
High Cycle Fatigue regime between 10E07 and 10E09 cycles with a higher
performance of time and energy wise compared to conventional
servo-hydraulic fatigue testing machines. In this study, an ultrasonic
fatigue testing machine was used to carry out multiaxial tension/torsion
fatigue tests at a frequency of 20 kHz. The objective was to reach a
reliable multiaxial fatigue testing method by modifying only the
specimen, with the ability to induce different shear to axial stress
ratios. The improved design/methodology of the testing ultrasonic
multiaxial method focused first on the innovative design specimens and
setup modal behaviour by conducting both numerical and experimental
analyses. Laser displacement measurements, thermographic imaging, and
rosette strain gauges applied to the specimen’s fatigue stress region
were carried out to validate the new design concept and compared with
the computed results obtained by finite element. A good numerical to
experimental results agreement was achieved. A series of fatigue tests
were carried out in tension/torsion fatigue to three different combining
dimension specimens allowing three different shear/axial stress ratios.
The resulting crack initiation angles and fracture surfaces were
analysed and compared not only between each other but also with
tension-compression and pure torsion ultrasonic tested specimens.