Fatigue & Durability Testing

Fatigue & Durability Testing

Component Fatigue Testing and renement using Prosig P8000 data acquisition hardware and DATS signal processing software
By James Wren, Sales Manager, Prosig Ltd

he following application continued use or to see if a design note describes the test change was required. and measurement process The component under test (Figure 1) was an for the fatigue testing and automotive suspension component, specically a tie rod. The testing was carried out by a major development cycle of a automotive manufacturer. component. Strain gauges First, the vehicle was instrumented and data were used to monitor the strain acquired whilst the vehicle was on a test track. vehicle under test was then mounted on a levels in a particular suspension The four-post shaker rig that simulates actual road component. The component had conditions. Particular sections of the actual test been known to fail at various run from the test track could be replicated for much longer periods than otherwise would be intervals. A predicted life for possible, additionally this could all be done in the component was required to the controlled conditions of the test laboratory. analyse the feasibility of the its This article will focus on the capture of the strain
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Fatigue & Durability Testing

Figure 1: Vehicle suspension under test type data and the processing of this resultant data to use Stress Life and Fatigue Life Prediction methods to predict the potential life of the component. Initially the vehicle was instrumented with strain gauges, using a Prosig P8000 portable data acquisition system. The vehicle was driven around a test track and data from the strain gauges acquired with the P8000 data acquisition unit. The data capture and signal processing procedure can be seen and followed from start to nish. Figure 2 shows an example of a strain gauge attached to the component under test by adhesive. In this case the gauge is a two wire device. Upon launching the Prosig Data Acquisition software several elds must be lled in. In this case only one strain gauge is to be used to assist in clarity for this application note. The signal names and types are entered, for this example a single strain gauge in a quarter bridge completion conguration is used. It is a 120 Ohm gauge and an excitation of 10VDC has been selected to be applied as shown in Figure 3. Next the Prosig P8000 and acquisition software is used to capture the strain data from the vehicle as it traverses the test track. The real time display, Figure 4, shows the micro strain and in this case the reciprocal nature of the data as it is being captured.

Figure 2: Strain gauge mounted on component under test Once this data capture was completed it was possible to return to the testing laboratory and use the vehicle shaker test rig. It was then possible to use the DATS signal processing software to select particular frequencies and amplitudes of strain data that the vehicle had been subject to on the test track and use the P8000 to replay the signals into the shaker to mimic particular parts of the test track using the analogue output feature of the P8000. This allows test engineers to control the amount of time the component under test will be subjected to particular frequencies or amplitudes. On the test track, in any one hour period the component will only be subject to some particular characteristics for several seconds. But by capturing this data and using the shaker rig it is possible to subject the component to an accelerated saturation of particular frequencies and amplitude characteristics. For this application note the suspension component was subject to 180 seconds of excitation. This was captured with the P8000 and opened in the DATS signal processing software (Figure 5). At this stage the strain data is with respect to time,

A predicted life for the component was required to analyse the feasibility of the continued use of the component

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Fatigue & Durability Testing

Figure 3: Acquisition setup screen

Figure 6: Peak and trough data

Figure 4: Real time display of data Figure 7: Peak & Trough analysis selection

Figure 5: Strain v time

Figure 8: S-N Curve analysis selection

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Fatigue & Durability Testing

Figure 9: S-N curve generation parameters

Figure 12: Stress Life Prediction analysis selection

Figure 13: Stress Life Prediction parameters Figure 10: S-N curve values

Figure 11: Generated S-N curve

Figure 14: Stress Life Prediction data

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Fatigue & Durability Testing

are required. As mentioned the S-N curve will be rened later. At this stage, the values for the Weld Classication are used. These are arbitrarily chosen as it is a known curve that closely follows that of the material under test. The generated S-N curve is then created as shown in Figure 11. With the peak trough data and S-N curve it is possible to complete a fatigue life prediction, using the Stress Life Fatigue Prediction analysis module (Figure 12). To complete this analysis both the S-N curve and the initial peak and trough data are required. Figure 15: Stress Life Prediction data (Named Elements) the amount of micro strain that the component was subject to can be seen over time. In order to begin with the fatigue life prediction it is necessary to analyse the peak and trough content of the captured data. This is easily achieved using the DATS Fatigue Life Analysis software tool kit. The peak and trough data was then produced as shown in Figure 6. Next, it was required to generate an S-N curve for the component. It is important to note that this is not an S-N curve for the material used in fabricating the component, but the S-N curve for the component itself. At this stage data is available for failure rates but this information is rough and sporadic. This, however, will not be used to produce the S-N curve at this point. The failure data will be used later to rene the S-N curve. Using the DATS Fatigue Life Analysis module for SN curve generation (Figures 9 & 10) it is possible to produce an S-N curve. S-N curves are by their nature very simple, they can usually be approximated by two intersecting straight lines on a graph of log stress verses log cycles. In this case three points are used to create the curve. A set number of cycles to failure and stress levels When the analysis module begins it prompts the user for certain values (Figure 13). The fatigue life prediction analysis module requires a youngs modulus for the material, in this case 2.07x104 MPa and a rain ow algorithm must be selected, in this case the ASTM1094. (American Society for Testing and Materials, Revision 1985). The conversion from Micro Strain to Stress uses the following formula, the micro strain values, e, are translated into stress, S, by solving

S S e = + E K
Where E is Youngs Modulus

1 / n

K' is Strain Hardening Coefcient n' is Strain Hardening Exponent If K' or n' or both are zero then the module uses S = eE This analysis takes two input datasets, the peak and trough count and the S-N curve. The resultant Stress Life Fatigue Prediction damage curve is shown in Figure 14, with a fatigue life prediction of 5.36x1023 seconds. The results of the Fatigue Life prediction also show more detailed results as Named Elements, these are shown highlighted in blue in Figure 15. These include Damage, Duration of original time www.prosig.com

At this stage data is available for failure rates but this information is rough and sporadic
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Fatigue & Durability Testing

failure is important. Because it is possible to apply the expected strain level for general use to the component for the known period of time, it is, therefore, possible to extrapolate the stress levels. Note, the stress levels and cycles to failure are not known for these situations. Only the time to failure is known. The component has also been tested to failure, with failures occurring at the following intervals. As these failures were under controlled test environments they can be considered more accurate than that discussed previously. These have time to failures of, Time to failure 6.48x105 seconds with a stress of 0.003010 MPa Figure 16: Recalculated S-N curve Time to failure 6.75x107 seconds with a stress of 0.000165 MPa The following have known time to failure, but with unknown strain levels. For these cases the known failure stress level can be used, in this case 0.000165 MPa is chosen. 1.52x107 seconds 7.78x107 seconds 2.64x106 seconds The cycles of the vehicle suspension component, importantly not the material cycles were at 2Hz. However, the material cycles were, from the peak and trough calculations in the captured data 3253 in a 180 second snap shot. Therefore, it is possible to calculate the number of material cycles for the known failure times. It is then possible to accurately adjust our initial S-N curve. It is also possible to calculate cycles to failure for the situations where the known failure times do not have strain information. This can be done because it is possible, from experimental testing, to deduce what the expected or average use and therefore strains will be.
Known or unknown strain Known Known Unknown Unknown Unknown Time to failure (seconds) 6.48x105 6.75x107 1.52x107 7.78x107 2.64x106 Cycles per 180 seconds 3253 3253 3253 3253 3253 Cycles to failure (seconds) 11710800 1219875000 274697777 1406018888 47710666

Figure 17: Recalculated life prediction sample, Number of cycles and so on. To summarise thus far, it has been possible to complete a fatigue life prediction from a sample of strains over a specic time period. This has given a predicted life of 5.36x1023 seconds. As discussed earlier the S-N curve was not rened and was almost arbitrary in its construction. This could potentially lead to errors. Therefore at this stage the S-N curve must be rened to allow the recalculation of the results and thus remove any potential errors. The component in question has been reported to fail in the eld after various time periods, hence the reason for the trial. Although the stress and strain levels are not known for these failures the time to

It is now possible to rene the original S-N curve

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Fatigue & Durability Testing

(Figure 16) with the 5 pairs of values calculated, 0.003010 MPa and 11710800 cycles to failure 0.000165 MPa and 1219875000 cycles to failure 0.000165 MPa and 274697777 cycles to failure 0.000165 MPa and 1406018888 cycles to failure 0.000165 MPa and 47710666 cycles to failure Therefore it is possible to extrapolate what the S-N curve could have been. And thus re-process the results using the automatic reprocessing features of DATS as shown in Figure 16. The result of the re-processed fatigue life prediction is 21.3x106 seconds. The conclusion is that after approximately 246 days of use at the expected level of 10 hours use per day, this component could be expected to fail. Clearly this is a fragile component that is likely to fail in an unacceptably low amount of time for an automotive manufacturer and a technical design change and further testing are required. It is clear to see that the more testing to failure that is carried out the more accurate the nal life prediction will be. [This article has been reduced in complexity compared to the original tests and uses deliberately modied initial strain values]

James Wren
James Wren is a Sales Engineer for Prosig Limited. James graduated from Portsmouth University in 2001, with a Masters degree in Electronic Engineering. He is a member of the Institute of Electronic Engineers. He has been involved with motorsport from a very early age with special interest in data acquisition. James is a founder member of the Dalmeny Racing team.

Prosig provide data acquisition, noise & vibration, acoustic, health & condition monitoring and renement solutions for the scientic and engineering communities and offer a number of standard hardware and software products. Take a look at www.prosig.com to discover why major automotive, military, aerospace, power and industrial companies rely on Prosig for their complete data acquisition, signal analysis and reporting software & hardware.

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Prosig Hardware & Software Used in This Tutorial

P8012 / P8020 Data Acquisition System DATS Professional software (01-55-622)
Acquisition, analysis & reporting Wide range of analysis functions Automated processing through DATS Scripts Built-in Report Generator (Intaglio) Comprehensive QA features
The DATS Professional software package contains all of the essential parts of the DATS software. It includes the data acquisition software for controlling the Prosig P5000/P8000 hardware and capturing data. The Professional package also provides all of the DATS analysis frameworks such as worksheets and scripting language. The Intaglio report generation facility is also included in the package.

P8012 - 3 card chassis P8020 - 5 card chassis Congurable channel options 24-bit accuracy Up to 50k samples/sec/channel (24bit) Up to 400k samples/sec/channel (16bit) Up to 20 analog channels plus tacho 96dB dynamic range -120dB noise oor
The P8012 supports 12 high speed analog inputs plus one digital tacho. The P8020 supports up to 20 high speed analog inputs plus two tachos. Units can be stacked to expand the system up to 80 channels. Various input options are available. These include high speed analog, low speed analog, thermocouple, strain gage, high speed tacho, CAN and GPS. Each option is complete with programmable signal conditioning, which is controlled by the DATS software.

DATS Professional Software

01-55-622 DATS Professional software. Includes Intaglio reporting suite, Macro & Script support and P5000/P8000 acquisition software.

DATS Fatigue Life Analysis (01-55-625)

Rainow counting Life Prediction Stress & Weld Life S-N Curves Materials Database & Editor
The Fatigue Analysis package provides a comprehensive set of programs for the fatigue test engineer. DATS worksheets and Scripts can be used to automate the testing and analysis process from data capture to report preparation.

P8012 / P8020 systems

03-33-8012 12-channel (3 card) chassis. Includes P8012 chassis PC to P8012 USB 2.0 communications cable Mains power supply for P8012 In-vehicle power cable for P8012 03-33-8020 20-channel (5 card) chassis. Includes P8020 chassis PC to P8020 USB 2.0 communications cable Mains power supply for P8020 In-vehicle power cable for P8020 Select any combination of the following cards up to a maximum of 3 cards (P8012) or 5 cards (P8020) 03-33-8402-B 4 high speed analog channels (BNC) * 03-33-8404-L4 4 high speed analog channels with programmable excitation (4-pin Lemo) * 03-33-8404-L6 4 high speed analog channels with programmable excitation (6-pin Lemo) * 03-33-8408 8 thermocouple channels 03-33-8409 8 analog channels 03-33-8420 4-channel tacho/frequency card (BNC) 03-33-8424 4-channel DAC 03-33-8440 Dual input CAN-bus/GPS card

DATS Fatigue Life Analysis Suite

01-55-625

Fatigue Life Analysis suite (Requires 01-55-622 DATS Professional)

Visit http://www.prosig.com/ for more details or to request a full catalogue. Or email your queries to sales@prosig.com.