Fatigue life assessment of an innovative laptop hinge

An innovative hinge structure of a laptop computer is currently under development, and the corresponding fatigue life assessment is therefore anticipated. A finite element analysis is carried out to investigate the response of the hinge under the cyclic loading conditions. The critical plane approach, linking to the baseline measurements, is adopted to construct relationships between damage parameters and fatigue lives. The submodelling technique is also implemented into the analysis for the detailed examination of the critical region. Furthermore a finite volume weighted averaging scheme is used for the reasonable life prediction here. Fatigue life of the hinge based on the damage criterion proposed by Socie et al. is in relatively fair agreement with that based on the associated experiments.