A comparative study of the predictive capability of multiaxial stress-based fatigue criteria

A comparative study is made of the predictive capability of a number of critical plane-based criteria, namely Findley (F), Matake (M), Susmel & Lazzarin (S&L), Carpinteri & Spagnoli (C&S) and Liu & Mahadevan (L&M), as well as a mesoscopic scale-based model proposed by Papadopoulos (P). Such criteria were applied to a set of published loading conditions which correspond to fatigue resistance limits involving synchronous sinusoidal in-phase and out-of-phase bending and torsion. The predictive capabilities associated with the application of these models were evaluated based on the respective error indices, which measure the deviation of such predictions with respect to their experimentally observed values within an infinite-life context. Assessment of the overall predictive capability, involving the totality of the 65 loading conditions considered in this work, is then presented in the form of frequency histograms, exhibiting the dispersion of the error index for each of the criteria in question. Accordingly, one could verify that the predictive capability of the Papadopoulos criterion is generally superior to those corresponding to the critical plane-based models involved in this study. Finally, the influence of specific loading parameters such as mean normal stress and mean shear stress on the degree of dispersion in the frequency histograms is presented and discussed.