STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF DAMAGES ACCUMULATION IN CONDITIONS OF COMBINED CYCLIC LOADING

A significant part of the elements of machines and structures along with stationary fatigue is subjected to combined impacts of low-cycle and multi-cycle fatigue loading in operation. The physical nature of their fracture in these conditions depends on the ratio of the mode parameters and entails the necessity of advanced research. The predominance of this or that process determines the nature of the damage accumulation which leads to the destruction. Under such conditions, i.e., preliminary cyclic elastoplastic deformation followed by subsequent fatigue loading, the material subjected to preliminary loading at the first stage can be considered the "new material" with the new properties acquired upon cyclic elastoplastic loading which then undergoes further fatigue loading at the second stage. Hence, at the second stage, the new properties of the material are determined by the level of structural changes and damages earlier accumulated in the material. In this case, the damage to the material is considered on the basis of the well-known statement about the staging character of plastic flow, two main processes, i.e., shear, caused by the interaction of dislocations, and destructuring, attributed to violation of the continuity or integrity of the metal. Experimental studies of changes in the durability of cyclically hardened and cyclically softened steel specimens at different levels of preliminary elastoplastic deformation with varying number of cycles and amplitudes of preliminary elastoplastic strain showed the occurrence of an additional damage to the material when combination of loading modes leads to change in the fatigue durability at the subsequent stage of the basic multi-cycle loading. It is shown that correlation between changes in the fatigue durability and structural state of the material, caused by accumulated damage upon preliminary overloads, and, moreover, those changes can be characterized by the ratio of plastic and destructive strains as a Q-factor of the material.

Study of load history effects on the high cycle fatigue properties of high-strength low-alloy steel from self-heating measurements

In the context of high cycle fatigue (HCF), the experimental characterization of the fatigue properties is often performed by using specimens in a virgin state (i.e., without preliminary loading), and with a constant stress amplitude for each specimen. However, the load history applied to a real structure is more complex and the fatigue life prediction remains a difficult task because of the time dedicated to the classical fatigue tests (i.e., the specimen is loaded until failure) and the dispersion of fatigue lives. The load history effects on the HCF properties is characterized using an alternative method: self-heating measurements under cyclic loadings. This method is based on the observation of the mean steady state temperature evolution of a specimen under a successive series of cyclic loadings with increasing stress amplitude for each loading series. A probabilistic two-scale model was developed from the self-heating method able to predict HCF properties. Some self-heating tests are performed to study the influence of a load history effects. It seems that the plasticity is the most influential factor. So, the evolution of the plasticity is observed at the surface of the material under cyclic loading. There is a significant evolution in function of the plastic pre-strain.

Effective Constitutive Equations for Porous Elastic Materials at Finite Strains and Superimposed Finite Strains

A method is developed for derivation of effective constitutive equations for porous nonlinear-elastic materials undergoing finite strains. It is shown that the effective constitutive equations that are derived using the proposed approach do not change if a rigid motion is superimposed on the deformation. An approach is proposed for the computation of effective characteristics for nonlinear-elastic materials in which pores are originated after a preliminary loading. This approach is based on the theory of superimposed finite deformations. The results of computations are presented for plane strain, when pores are distributed uniformly.

Tensegrity Architecture of an Agglutinated Foraminiferan Shell

Shells of agglutinated foraminiferan protists are composed of mineral grains bound by secreted adhesives. As such, they are useful models for examining the evolution of “primitive” exoskeletons. Previous studies revealed the ultrastructure of shells in the giant Antarctic foraminiferan Astrammina rara and demonstrated that shucked specimens would reconstruct shells using glass beads. Here we further investigate shell architecture in this model species.For micromechanical testing, an intact A. rara shell was placed between a fixed plate and a facing plate in series with a calibrated load cell. Displacement was effected by a high-precision drive, and 2-3 loading cycles were used to determine shell material properties. to assay tensile properties of the adhesive matrix, a network of pseudopodia and extracellular matrix fibers (i.e., the shell adhesive component) was obtained by incubating shucked cell bodies on 200-mesh gold grids. Pseudopodia were subsequently removed by detergent washes. Fibers in the resultant isolated matrix were severed with a Nd: YAG laser using an inverted DIC light microscope equipped with a 60× objective lens. Preliminary loading experiments using glass needles showed that Sepharose 2B beads were suitable strain gauges to assess compression within reconstructed shells (Fig. 1). in this assay, shucked cell bodies were incubated with a mixture of glass and Sepharose beads, and the reconstructed shells were examined by SEM.Repeated loading and unloading demonstrated the elastic behavior of intact shells (Fig. 2). Adhesive matrix fibers snapped towards their attachment sites within 2 sec after cutting with a laser (Fig. 3), demonstrating that they are deployed under tension. SEM images of shells reconstructed with Sepharose show compressed particle profiles (Fig. 4).