A statistical model of fatigue failure incorporating effects of specimen size and load amplitude on fatigue life

Among many contributing factors, the load range, number of load cycles and specimen geometry (including configuration and size) are three major variables for fatigue failure. Most existing statistical fatigue models deal with only one or two of these three variables. According to the statistical distribution of microcracks with respect to their size and spatial location, a weakest-link probabilistic model for fatigue failure is established to incorporate the combined effect of load range, number of load cycles and specimen size. The model reveals a compound parameter of load range and number of load cycles reminiscent of the empirical formulae of fatigue stress-life curve and its correlation with another compound parameter of cumulative failure probability and specimen size. Four sets of published fatigue test data are adopted to validate the model.