Low-cycle fatigue model of damage accumulation – The strain approach

The paper presents a model of damage accumulation designed to analyse fatigue life of structural elements exploited in multiaxial, non-proportional, low-cycle loading conditions. The discussed approach consists of two calculation blocs. In the first bloc the components of stress and strain tensor are determined. This module, in which Mroz’s multisurface model was used, contains constitutive relations and the law of kinematic hardening. The second bloc contains the dependencies which determine the growth of anisotropic measure of damage accumulation (associated with the physical plane) and crack initiation criterion. The growth of the damage accumulation measure was associated with the loading damage accumulation function and the increment of non-dilatational plastic strain on the physical plane. It was assumed that crack initiation occurs when stress or a measure of damage accumulation on any physical plane reaches critical values.