Low-Cycle Fatigue, Fractography and Life Assessment of EN AW 2024-T351 under Various Loadings

The paper provides extensive experiments on aluminium alloy 2024-T351. Those cover the uniaxial strain- and stress-controlled tests using cylindrical specimens. Then, multiaxial tests were conducted via strain- and stress-controlled tensile–torsional loading on tubular specimens, which also cover the following non-proportional test – the 3-step experiment carried out in order to document the additional hardening. The paper also provides a fractography using the scanning electron microscopy and the life assessment. A novel approach to fatigue life prediction is presented, based on replacing the plastic part of the strain-life curve by the non-linear term in order to provide more variability and approximation ability. The broad experimental base will serve as a basis for future calibration and simulation using advanced cyclic plasticity models within the finite elements.