Chapter 2: A Simple S-N Analysis MSC Fatigue 2005 QuickStart Guide

A Simple S-N Analysis

Problem Description Geometry 31

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis Run the Fatigue Analysis Review the Results Concluding Remarks 49 54 48

35

Multiple Mean Stress Curve Support

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Problem Description

Problem Description
In this first example problem we start with a very simple model to introduce some fatigue analysis concepts by investigating the total life of the component shown to the side. For the purpose of this exercise we will refer to it as the keyhole model as it is a keyhole shape notched component. Due to symmetry only the top half of the keyhole was modeled.

Objective
To introduce the S-N fatigue life prediction method, commonly referred to as the total life method. All files necessary to perform this and subsequent examples are found in <install_dir>/mscfatigue_files/examples (UNIX) x:<install_dir>\mscfatigue_files\examples (Windows) Where, <install_dir> is the installation top level directory such as /msc/fatigueXX (/msc/patranXX) or z:\msc\fatigueXX (z:\msc\patranXX), z is the drive letter for Windows workstations, and XX is the version number. The <install_dir> is commonly referred to as P3_HOME and, as such, can be set as an environment variable as explained in the MSC Fatigue Installation and Operations Guide under the section called User Environment. Each chapter will have a table in this section indicating which files are necessary for proper execution. Table 2-1 Chapter 2 Necessary Files File P3_HOME/mscfatigue_files/examples/simpleSN.op2 Copy the file simpleSN.op2 to a clean working directory to begin.

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Geometry

Geometry
A linear static finite element analysis has been performed already with a load magnitude of 10,000 Newtons. To begin, read this model and results information into a new database using MSC Fatigue Pre&Post (referred to as Pre&Post from here on) or use MSC Patran. From the system prompt or a DOS window in a clean directory invoke Pre&Post or MSC Patran.

fXX or fatXX p3 or patran Note:

or fatigue where XX is the version number

Pre&Post or MSC Patran can also be invoked from the Start menu on Windows workstations. In all cases, be sure that Pre&Post or MSC Patran is running from the working directory.

After the graphical interface starts open a new database from File | New and call it keyhole. The model was run through an MSC Nastran analysis, so keep the Analysis Preference set to MSC Nastran when asked.

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Geometry

Import the Model

Select the Import toggle switch (Analysis in MSC Patran) on the main form. When the form appears, set the Action to Access Results, the Object to Read Output2, and the Method to Both (model and results). Press the Select Results File button and select the file simpleSN.op2. Press the Apply button. The model will then appear and you are ready to set up a fatigue analysis.

View the Stress Results

Before moving on to the fatigue analysis, first press the Results application switch on the main form to view the stress results from the MSC Nastran analysis. The Create | Quick Plot form is displayed. Go to the Select Fringe Result listbox and select Stress Tensor . Set the Quantity Option menu to Maximum Principal 2D. Press the Apply button and note the areas of high stress. The maximum principal stress appears to be about 333 MPa.

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Geometry

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Geometry

When you are done, press the Results switch again to close down the Results application form.

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

To begin setup for a fatigue analysis, select the Analysis switch in Pre&Post (or from the Tools pulldown menu in MSC Patran, select MSC Fatigue and then Main Interface). This will bring up the MSC Fatigue main form from which all parameters, loading and materials information, and analysis control are accessed.

Acess from MSC Fatigue Pre&Post

Access from MSC Patran

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

Once the form is open, set the General Setup Parameters as follows:

1. Analysis: S-N 2. Results Loc.: Node This simply means that the fatigue lives will be determined at the nodes of the model. 3. Nodal Ave.: Global Accept the default which simply means element nodal stresses will be averaged to the nodes for all element contributions. 4. F.E. Results: Stress S-N analyses require stresses; you do not have a choice.

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

5. Res. Units: MPa Model dimensions are millimeters and forces are in Newtons, therefore stress units are MPa. 6. Jobname: simple_sn 7. Title: Simple S-N Analysis

Solution Parameters
Now open the Solution Params... form. On this form, set only these parameters: 1. Mean Stress Correction: None

The time signal we are using is fully reversed, R=-1. The S-N curve itself was generated by testing numerous polished test specimens at different constant amplitude, fully reversed (R=-1) loading conditions. (The parameters (power law) that defines the S-N curve was determined by regression analysis of the raw data.) Therefore no mean stress correction is required since there is no mean stress to speak of. Note: Acceptance values for Mean Stress Correction are Goodman, Gerber, Multiple Mean, or None. In Section 2.7, we shall demonstrate, the Multiple Mean Curve Method.

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

2. Stress Combination: Max. Abs. Principal This is the stress parameter that will be used in the fatigue analysis. The stress tensor from the FE analysis results will be extracted at each node. However only a single stress value can be looked up on the S-N curve. So the six component values of the stress tensor will be resolved to the maximum absolute principal value which will be used as the stress look up parameter. Press the OK button to continue.

Material Information
Now press the Material Info... button on the main MSC Fatigue form. Select an S-N Curve A spreadsheet appears whose cells need to be filled in. We will specify an S-N curve, a material surface finish and treatment, and a region on the model to which this combination will apply.

1. Material: MANTEN_MSN Select the first cell of the spreadsheet with the cursor. A listbox appears at the bottom of the form from which you select a material (S-N curve). Select MANTEN_MSN. 2. Surface Finish: No Finish The next cell becomes active and a pulldown menu appears. Select No Finish. 3. Surface Treatment: No Treatment The next cell becomes active and a pulldown menu appears. Select No Treatment. 4. Region: default_group

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

The next cell becomes active and a listbox appears. Select default_group. This is a default group of entities defined in the database. It contains all the nodes and elements of the model. This defines the area of the model (the entire thing) to which this combination of material, finish, and treatment are to be assigned.

View the S-N Curve It is of interest to view the actual S-N curve that will be used to look up damage, and ultimately, calculate a fatigue life from the stresses of the model. Press the Materials Database Manager button. This will launch PFMAT, the materials database manager. First load the material by pressing or double clicking on the Load switch, selecting data set 1 from the optionmenu that pops up, and then selecting

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

MANTEN_MSN from the list. You can then press or double click the Graphical Display switch to view the S-N curve.

Note:

Again, Pre&Post or MSC Patran will be suspended until PFMAT is closed so that any newly created materials are recognized by the Pre&Post or MSC Patran graphical interface.

Note:

The dashed line portion of the S-N curve indicates a region where the S-N curve is invalid. The S-N fatigue analysis method is generally only good for high cycle fatigue problems, meaning that the number of cycles to failure is generally very high. Note that this invalid region is below about 104 cycles. Another region of the curve is the cut-off region where the endurance limit is defined (108). Anything above this limit will be reported back as being beyond the cut-off (infinite life).

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

The material information is complete. Select File | Exit to close the plot and eXit to quit PFMAT. Press the OK button to close the Material Info... form.

Note:

An S-N curve is based on the principle of similitude. This simply means that if we can reproduce the same stress as that experienced in, say, Tower Bridge as shown to the right, in a test laboratory specimen made of the same material, then we can expect the life of the two to be about the same, if subjected to the same levels of stress.

Loading Information
Now in order to do a fatigue analysis using linear static FE results we must define how the load varies with time. This is easily done in MSC Fatigue using the Loading Database Manager, PTIME. Open the Loading Info... form. Then press the Time History Manager button. This will launch PTIME. The load will be defined as a constant amplitude, fully reversed loading. This will have the effect of oscillating the 10,000 Newton load from +10,000 to -10,000 newtons.

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

Note:

Pre&Post or MSC Patran will be suspended during this operation until PTIME is closed. This is indicated by the blue busy signal in the top right corner. Since PTIME is a separate process, this suspension is necessary to make Pre&Post or MSC Patrans graphical interface recognize any new time signals.

Define a Unit Load - Fully Reversed When PTIME comes up, select Enter X-Y points as the method of input (on Windows you will have to double click on this option or select it and press the OK button). A form will appear that will ask for a file name, description and other information. Enter the following leaving defaults for those not mentioned:

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

1. Filename: UNITLOAD 2. Description 1: Constant Amplitude, Fully Reversed Unit Load 3. Fatigue equivalent units: Cycles We are defining a single occurrence of this fully reversed, constant amplitude signal as one cycle of the loading. Press the OK button to go on. Next you will be prompted to enter the XY points. We actually only enter Y points as the X points are taken as evenly spaced intervals with the sample rate set to one. Enter the following numbers with a carriage return after each: 0, 1, -1, 0. End by putting in a blank entry and then press the End button.

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

Plot the Time History

PTIME returns to its main menu where you can select Plot an entry and press the OK button. A new form is displayed showing the Database Entry to plot. Accept the default file, UNITLOAD.

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

Note:

The mean of this signal is zero. In fatigue analysis, constant amplitude loading is usually accompanied by a description of the mean, commonly referred to as the R-ratio. The R-ratio is the minimum value of the signal divided by the maximum value and is a measure of the signals mean value. In this case R=-1 signifying a fully reversed load where the maximum and minimum absolute magnitudes are identical.

Select File | Exit to close the plot and press or double click the eXit switch in PTIME.

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

Associate the FE Load to its Time Variation

Now back on the Loading Info... form you must associate the time variation of the load that you just created to the FE load case. This is done via a spreadsheet. Three pieces of information must be input to the spreadsheet in the center of the form with all other parameters using their default settings.

1. Load Case ID: 1.1-3.1-2Place the cursor in the cell in the first column and click the mouse button. This selects the cell. A number of listboxes, buttons, and pulldown menus appear below the spreadsheet. This is where you specify the FE analysis results that you will use in the fatigue analysis. They appear empty at first. To fill them, press the Get/Filter Results... button. On this form turn the Select All Results Cases toggle ON and press the Apply button. This will fill the listbox on the left with the only result load case that exists. Select it, and select Stress Tensor from the second listbox and then press the Fill Cell button. This will fill the cell with the internal IDs of the selected load case and its stress results. This is the significance of the numbers 1.1-3.1-2-. They are internal IDs only but are necessary to identify the results. Note: The actual load case ID numbers you see may differ from those shown here. What you want to select is the DEFAULT, Static Subcase and the corresponding Stress Tensor at layer Z1.

2. Time History: UNITLOAD The middle cell becomes active after successfully selecting a FE load case. Another spreadsheet (with one row) appears at the bottom of the form from which you select the previously created time history file. Click on the UNITLOAD row anywhere with the mouse. This will fill the cell with the time history file name.

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Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

3. Load Magnitude: 1.0 The next cell becomes active and a databox appears below the spreadsheet. Simply accept the default, which is unity. A specification of unity here signifies that the stresses from the FE analysis will be used as-is in the fatigue analysis and the time variation loading that we defined will be used to scale the stresses up or down as needed. You must press a carriage return (Return or Enter) to accept the value in the databox and fill in the cell in the spreadsheet. A common error is to forget to do this. The time variation of the loading is now associated to the static FE results. Press the OK button to close the Loading Info... form.

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Run the Fatigue Analysis

Run the Fatigue Analysis

You are ready to run the fatigue analysis. Open the Job Control... form. Set the Action to Full Analysis and press the Apply button. The database will close momentarily as the results information is extracted. When the database reopens, the job will have been submitted. You can then set the Action to Monitor Job and press the Apply button from time to time to view the progress. When the message

Fatigue analysis completed successfully appears, the analysis is complete. Close down the Job Control... form when done.

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Review the Results

Review the Results

Open the Results... form on the main MSC Fatigue setup form (not to be confused with the Results application switch on the main Pre&Post or MSC Patran form). With the Action set to Read Results press Apply. The fatigue analysis results will then be read into the database.

View the Life Contour Plot

Just as you viewed the stresses earlier, you can view the life plot. Select the Results application switch on the main Pre&Post or MSC Patran form. The Create | Quick Plot form will appear. On this form select the Total Life, simple-snfef item in the Select Result Cases listbox and the Log of Life (Cycles) item in the Select Fringe Result listbox and then press Apply. Note that the smallest life reported is approximately 5.65. This is a log base(10) value. So the actual life value is 10 5.65 . Reporting life values in log units tends to spread the contour bands out for better results interpretation. Since such a large spread of results values can occur (from finite to infinite at locations where no damage occurs), it is not really practical to plot pure life values. Press the Results switch again to close the Results application.

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Review the Results

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Review the Results

Tabular Listing
Press the Analysis switch to bring the main MSC Fatigue form back (this is not necessary in MSC Patran). On the MSC Fatigue Results... form, change the Action to List Results and press Apply. This will start the module PFPOST which tabularly lists the fatigue analysis results. Accepting the jobname and the default filtering values, by pressing OK a couple of times, will get you to the main menu. Press or double click the Most damaged nodes switch to view a tabular listing. Note the life value of approximately 10 5.65 =4.5E5 cycles on Node 1. Press Cancel to quit the listing and press or double click eXit to leave PFPOST.

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Review the Results

What If?
As one small exercise to introduce the concept of what if analyses, change the Action to Optimize and press Apply (you do not need to enter a node number) on the Results... form. This will launch the module FEFAT in its design optimization mode. FEFAT is the FE-fatigue analyzer used to calculate fatigue life. It can be run in both batch and interactive modes. When it comes up, press Worst Case to automatically select the node with the lowest life prediction. Enter a Design Life of 1E6 (a million) cycles. Press the OK button. The analyzer will re-analyze the fatigue life at Node 1 and will report the life value to you. Pressing the End button will put you into the main optimization menu.

Change the material from MANTEN_MSN to RQC100_MSN to see the effect of a different material on the fatigue life. Do this by pressing or double clicking the Material optimization switch and selecting or typing in the new material name. Press OK and then press or double click the Recalculate switch to report the new life. Note that the life is bettered by almost an order of magnitude.

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Review the Results

Hint:

When you change materials, they must be the same types of materials (steel vs. steel, aluminum vs. aluminum, etc.) If you wish to change from steel to aluminum then the Youngs modulus changes would invalidate the results. There are some general guidelines on how to do this properly, however, in the MSC Fatigue Users Guide.

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Concluding Remarks

Concluding Remarks
This was a very simple analysis, the results of which should be obvious. The lowest life was naturally predicted at the highest stressed location. Because the loading was simple, perhaps a detailed fatigue analysis as performed here, was not necessary. In fact you could have simply extracted the highest principal stress (333 MPa) and gone directly to the S-N curve using PFMAT to assess the life. This, of course, starts to become very impractical with anything much more complicated as you will see in subsequent examples. As an exercise, go back to the Material Info... form and invoke the materials database manager, PFMAT, again and plot the S-N curve as done before. With the S-N curve plotted you can use the left mouse button positioned on the curve to read off coordinate values (reported in the lower left corner). You can also use the right mouse button to zoom in on the curve (click once on one side of the curve and again on the other side to zoom). To restore the curve, select the View | Full Plot option. You can read the life value right from the curve.

Hint:

To read the correct life value from the curve for this exercise, you must multiply the maximum principal stress at Node 1 by two (666 MPa) since the total range of the signal is twice the stress determined by the FE analysis since it is experiencing full reversal.

Note:

Note about plasticity: as mentioned in Introduction, fatigue cannot occur without some local plasticity. The S-N method makes no effort to define the amount of plasticity or compensate for it in any specific manner. All plasticity is built into the S-N curve itself. The S-N curve used in this exercise is known as a material S-N curve. This is significant because you must know beforehand what the S-N curve you use actually represents. In this case the S-N curve is representative of the actual material and relates local stress () to life. That is, the monitored stress used to create the S-N curve is the stress at the actual failure location. This will become more clear when we discuss another type of S-N curve (component S-N) in a later exercise.

Exit from Pre&Post when finished with this exercise. Keep the files and directory for use in the next exercise.

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Multiple Mean Stress Curve Support

Multiple Mean Stress Curve Support

This section describes the multiple mean stress curve support in MSC Fatigue. Multiple mean stress curve analysis uses empirical data to account for mean stress effects rather than analytical methods such as Gerber and Goodman. Multiple mean stress curve analysis is for S-N analysis only. Temperature corrections, certainty of survival, Optimization and Fast Analysis are not available for Multiple Mean Stress Curve S-N analysis.

Set Up the Fatigue Analysis

We will use the model in the previous exercise to run this test case. Leave all settings on the general setup form as is except for the Jobname and the Title. Set these as shown: 1. Jobname: multi_mean 2. Title: Multiple Menu Stress Curve Solution Parameters Open the Solution Params form. Set the Mean Stress Correction optionmenu to Multiple Mean Curves. Use the default values for all the other widgets. Press OK to close the form.

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Multiple Mean Stress Curve Support

Material Information Open the Material information form. It is identical to the standard S-N analysis, except:
An ASCII materials database is used (extension .mnd) instead of the standard Materials database

(.mdb).
Selecting the Materials Database Manager button brings up a text editor instead of PFMAT. Even though the Surface Finish, Treatment and Kf cells are visible they are not available for

input. Click on the Materials Database Manager button to view the file containing the Multiple Mean Stress Curve data.

Select the Material MANTEN from the listbox and pick the default_group for analysis. Click OK.

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Multiple Mean Stress Curve Support

Loading Information Open the Loading information form. This form should be still filled out from the previous example. Press OK to accept the inputs.

Run the Fatigue Analysis

Open the Job Control form. Set the Action to Full Analysis and press the Apply button. Monitor the job and once it has completed close the form. Open the Results form. Set the Action to List Results and press Apply. The PFPOST module is now displayed. Select the Jobname multi_mean and press OK. Accept the defaults on the next form by just pressing OK. Now select the detail Information switch. The form that is displayed shows that a life of 1.86E4 repeats, read off the zero mean MANTEN curve, is reported at Node 1. Press End to close the form. Press eXit to exit the PFPOST module. Lets take a closer look at the stress time history at this node. In order to do this the Action needs to be changed to Extract Time History. Enter Node 1 in the databox and press Apply. The MFATFE module

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Multiple Mean Stress Curve Support

is now displayed. On the first form select the Utilities switch. Next select the Node/Element options switch and press OK. On the next form press OK to accept the Result Filename, then select the User input switch and set the Node/Element ID to 1. Press OK. Select the Time History Extraction switch and press OK. This will bring up a table that shows the maximum and minimum stress values for Node 1. Press Cancel to close this form and bring up the graphical representation of the data as shown below.

To close this picture select File | eXit. Select Return, then select return to Main menu, and finally select eXit to close the MFATFE module. Make a note of this life as we will compare this life with and offset time history to demonstrate the Multi Mean Stress Curve concept. Verification: On the General Setup form, change the Jobname to multi_mean_offset. Offset the Time History on the loading form by applying an offset of 0.3 that will yield an offset range mean of 100 Mpa. A 100 Mpa mean stress S-N curve exists in the database for MANTEN, the material used in the analysis above. Run the Job and list the results. The life at the same location (Node 1) drops to 2.3E3 repeats. The offset stress time history at Node 1 is shown below.

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Multiple Mean Stress Curve Support

For a stress range of 666 Mpa, the 100 Mpa mean stress curve yields the life calculated.

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Multiple Mean Stress Curve Support