An Innovative Development for Predicting Fatigue Life in Complex Loading Scenarios

Fatigue life prediction plays a significant role in the simulation stage of products in order to avoid unpredictable failures and improve the service lifespan. Therefore, it is crucial for simulation software to have a good technology to simulate robust, accurate, and fast results. In literature, special methods such as mesh-free, phase field, and XFEM have been developed for this purpose, but their applications are still limited, and they require high computational costs, making them difficult to use in the design process. To overcome these limitations, a novel technology for crack growth analysis called SMART crack growth has been developed in Ansys. The method offers a fully automated and fast remeshing-based crack growth simulation tool for fatigue and static crack growth in complex 3D models. However, because it is a new technology, it had been limited to a single cycle definition and proportional loading until the recent release of version 23.X. In real life, mission loads on most fatigue-critical structures are usually of a complex nature. Thus, it is of great importance to simulate the failure mechanisms associated with complex loading fatigue and to have the capability to quantify crack growth rate and fatigue lifetime under complex loading.

The main aim of this presentation is to discuss the implementation of the scheme suggested to analyze complex random loading in Ansys. Moreover, the study provides an overview of the scheme's potential for a realistic simulation of fatigue crack growth and the potential for integrating a machine learning algorithm into the solution stage.