2009 International Conference on E-Learning, E-Business, Enterprise Information Systems, and E-Government

Fitting and prediction for crack propagation rate based on machine

learning optimal algorithm

Yi WAN, Chengwen WU
College of Physics and Electronic Information Engineering
Wenzhou University
Wenzhou, China
E-mail: yiwan246@126.com, wuchengwen@yahoo.com

Abstract—Establishing fatigue crack propagation rate is the
key to forecasting structure fatigue lifetime, nine parameters
fatigue crack propagation rate model and McEvily model
are widely applied at present, but it is very complex to
realize these models, partial derivative must be calculated
and there is large deviation between fitted static parameter
and actual value and physical conception isn’t clear. In
accordance with the disadvantage above methods, Based on
optimum parameter selection with grid search and cross
validation, we presented optimal common machine learning
algorithm (least squares support vector machine-LSSVM)
method for fatigue crack propagation rate forecast.
Complicated and strong nonlinear fatigue crack propagation
rate curve was simulated by network design and
conformation of LSSVM learning algorithm and the
optimized SVM parameters were selected by the method of
network searching and cross validation. Compared the
errors with output value of the optimized model and output
value from nine parameters fatigue crack propagation rate
fitting model, LSSVM whose parameter was optimized with
cross validation had excellent ability of nonlinear modeling
and generalization. It provided a simple and feasible
intelligent approach for material fatigue analysis.
Keywords- Optimized common machine learning algorithm;
grid search and cross validation; fatigue crack propagation
rate; material fatigue analysis, nine parameters fatigue crack
propagation rate model
I. INTRODUCTION
More and more people understand fatigue crack
propagation rate curve is more basic curve than S-N curve
to describe material fatigue speciality in structure
reliability analysis. Establishing fatigue crack propagation
rate is the key to forecasting structure fatigue lifetime,
and fatigue crack propagation rate is usually calculated by
some estimating model, such as McEvily model and W. C.
CUI presented a nine parameters fatigue crack
propagation rate model within a wide applicable range,
each parameter value of crack propagation rate model is
estimated by many experiment data for estimating model.
In principle, all parameters are able to be established by
nonlinear multi-parameter regression method, but it is
very complex to realize the model, complex partial
derivative need be calculated, in addition, there is large
deviation between fitted static parameter and actual value,
at the same time, physical conception isn’t clear, it is
ultimate goal that designers obtain fatigue crack
propagation rate curve simply and reliably [1-4].
In the paper, we presented optimal common machine
learning algorithm (least squares support vector
machine-LSSVM) method for fatigue crack propagation
rate forecast. Complicated and strong nonlinear fatigue
crack propagation rate curve was simulated by network
design and conformation of LSSVM learning algorithm
and the optimized SVM parameters were selected by the
method of network searching and cross validation.
Compared the errors with output value of the optimized
model and output value from nine parameters fatigue
crack propagation rate fitting model, LSSVM whose
parameter was optimized with cross validation had
excellent ability of nonlinear modeling and generalization.
It provided a simple and feasible intelligent approach for
material fatigue analysis.
II. SVM ALGORITHM OF PARAMETER
OPTIMUM SELECTION
A. Improved support vector algorithm-LSSVM
Improved SVM algorithm is called least squares
support vector machine (LSSVM). It uses different
optimized objective function and replaces equation
restriction by in-equation restriction [5-10].
Objective optimized function of LSSVM algorithm is:
1 1 n 2
min J ( w, e) = W T W + γ ∑ ek (1)
w ,b , e 2 2 K =1
s.t. y k = W T φ ( x k ) + b + e k , k = 1,2, " , N
where φ (⋅) : R n → R nh is kernel space mapping
function; w ∈ R nh is weight vector; ek ∈ R is error
variable; b is deflection variable; γ is adjustable
parameter.
Using equations (1), Lagrange function is obtained as
N
{
L = J (w, e) − ∑αk W Tφ(xk ) + b + ek − yk } (2)
k =1
where α k is Lagrange multiplier.
Partial derivative is solved to (2) and (3) is obtained by
transforming.

978-0-7695-3907-2/09 $26.00 © 2009 IEEE 93

DOI 10.1109/EEEE.2009.31
 −1
T ⎡ 1 ⎤
1n ⎢Ω + I n ⎥ y
⎣ γ ⎦
b= −1
T ⎡ 1 ⎤
1 n ⎢ Ω + I n ⎥ 1n
⎣ γ ⎦
−1
⎡ 1 ⎤
α = ⎢Ω + I n ⎥ ( y − 1n b ) (3)
⎣ γ ⎦
So function of LSSVM decision-making classification is
N
y ( k ) = ∑ α k K ( x, x k ) + b (4) Fig.1 LSSVM intelligent model structure of fatigue crack propagation
k =1 rate prediction
where K ( x, x k ) is Gaussian Kernel Function,
B. Simulation and result
{
K ( x, x k ) = exp − x − x k
2
/σ 2
}. To evaluate the accuracy and practicality of fatigue
crack propagation rate intelligent model based on
B. Optimal selection of model parameter LSSVM, using material 1 and material 2 as simulation
Parameter pairs ( γ , σ ) are selected by grid search object [12], LSSVM model is trained by limit experimental
method at first, and then goal function is optimized using data, and then model prediction ability is validated by
cross validation until optimal parameter pairs are part remaining experiment data. LSSVM parameters are
searched [11]. optimized by grid search-cross validation, optimal result
A parameter pair ( γ , σ ) is selected by grid search, is γ = 12288.6006 and σ = 0.270370922 . Optimization
and the parameter pair is validated crosswise. The method
traversal process of parameters γ ， σ based on grid
is that sample set D is divided to H
search-cross validation is shown in figure2.
groups {G1 , G 2 , " , G H } , Random H − 1 groups are
acted as sample set, remaining group is acted as
validation set, H times are able to be repeated by selecting
different validation set. And then cross validation is
progressed by selecting parameter pairs circularly and
mean square error MSE is calculated to every parameter
until grid search stop.

III. LSSVM INTELLIGENT MODEL OF FATIGUE

CRACK PROPAGATION RATE
A. Model structure design and data pretreatment
There are strong non-linear relations between material
crack propagation rate CPR (m/cycle) and the amplitude
value of stress intensity factor Δ K , and the characteristic Fig.2 Optimization traversal process of parameters γ，σ
relation is complex and uncertain, non-linear function based on grid search-cross validation
relation is described by (6). In nine parameters fitting model:
CPR = f ( Δ K ) (5) da = AM 2 (10)
Δ K = YΔ σ π a (6) Kc
( )
dN 1 − K max n

CPR = da / dN (7) ( )
M = Kmax(1 − R) − 1 − e−ka (Kop max − RKmax) − ΔKeffth (11)
Where Y is Geometry factor of crack factual length,
a is crack length (m), σ is material stress (Mpa). ⎛ σ ⎞⎛ ⎞
Kmax = π re⎜ Secπ max +1⎟⎜⎜1+Y(a) a ⎟⎟σmax (12)
Equation (5) can be represented as following equation. ⎝ 2 σV ⎠⎝ 2re ⎠
da / dN = f ( a ) (8) ΔK effth K op max
a is acted as network input layer, CPR is output, Where and are function of stress
output node number is one, intelligent model structure is ratio R, the two parameters can be described as following
shown in figure1. formula.
To improve network speciality, data are pretreated by ΔK effth = ΔK effth0 (1 − R) γ (13)
normalization, Gaussian kernel is used in the intelligent
model, namely: K op max = K op max 0 (1 − R) γ (14)
2 In the above model, there are nine parameters A, n,
K ( x, xi ) = exp(− x − xi /σ 2) (9)

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σu, re, Kc, ΔK effth 0 , Kopmax0 , k and γ, they can be
solved by Mathematical theory of non-linear
multi-parameter regression.
Calculation and Prediction results of material 1
fatigue crack propagation rate values based on least
square support vector machine algorithm and nine
parameters fitting model are shown in figure3, Error of
LSSVM prediction values and calculating values of nine
parameters fitting model are shown in table1 and figure4,
mean relative error is 0.146% by calculating, it provided
an economical, practical and reliable approach for
material fatigue design.

Fig.4 Relative error of LSSVM prediction values and calculating

values of nine parameters fitting model

Fatigue crack propagation rate predictive curve of

material 1 and material 2 are obtained by trained and
optimized LSSVM intelligent model, their curve are
shown in figure5 and figure6.

Fig.3 Prediction results of fatigue crack propagation rate based on

LSSVM optimal algorithm

Table1. Comparison between LSSVM predictive values and nine

parameters fitting values
M a/m Nine
LSSVM
at parameter
predictive error
er s fitting
values
ial values Figure5.Fatigue crack propagation rate predictive curve of material1
1 0.001 -4.50 -4.7959 -0.2959
0.004 -3.80 -4.0565 -0.2565
0.008 -3.50 -3.4359 0.0641
0.010 -3.30 -3.2515 0.0485
0.015 -3.10 -3.0343 0.0657
0.020 -3.00 -2.9754 0.0246
0.030 -2.60 -2.6272 -0.0272
0.031 -2.50 -2.5551 -0.0551
0.032 -2.40 -2.4762 -0.0762
0.034 -2.41 -2.2998 0.1102
2 0.020 -3.00 -2.9903 0.0097
0.024 -2.90 --2.8468 0.0532
0.026 -2.80 -2.8244 -0.0244
0.028 -2.70 -2.7927 -0.0927
0.030 -2.60 --2.6665 -0.0665
0.031 -2.50 -2.5303 -0.0303 Figure6.Fatigue crack propagation rate predictive curve of material2
0.033 -2.20 -2.0194 0.1806
0.034 -1.40 -1.6047 -0.2047

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 IV. CONCLUSION
In the paper, we presented optimal common machine
learning algorithm (least squares support vector
machine-LSSVM) method for fatigue crack propagation
rate forecast. Complicated and strong nonlinear fatigue
crack propagation rate curve was simulated by network
design and conformation of LSSVM learning algorithm
and the optimized SVM parameters were selected by the
method of network searching and cross validation.
Compared the errors with output value of the optimized
model and output value from nine parameters fatigue
crack propagation rate fitting model, LSSVM whose
parameter was optimized with cross validation had
excellent ability of nonlinear modeling and generalization,
mean relative error of LSSVM prediction values and
calculating values of nine parameters fitting model is
0.146%. It provided a simple and feasible intelligent
approach for material fatigue analysis.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work is supported by foundation of Wenzhou
science and technology bureau (H20080051), supported
by Foundation of Zhe’jiang Educational Committee of
China (No.20070533).The authors are grateful for the
anonymous reviewers who made constructive comments.
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