Load Controlled Fatigue of AZ31B

With the expanding demand on application of magnesium alloys in automotive and aerospace industries, robust methods in fatigue characterization of commercially available magnesium alloys with high specific strength is anticipated. In this paper, rotating bending load controlled tests has been studied on specimens machined from an extrusion piece of AZ31B. Due to asymmetric and anisotropic behavior of AZ31B, methods of transferring the load controlled results into stress-life results are lacking. Using the approach of variable material property (VMP), the load-stress relation in fully reversed test is derived. To apply the proposed method to AZ31B, the cyclic behavior of the material is required. Fully reversed step-loading of AZ31B over a wide range of strain amplitude was carried out on a servo hydraulic fatigue rig and was reported in the literature. The stabilized cyclic behavior at half-life was obtained for different load levels. Also, the cyclic tension and the cyclic compression curves were obtained. Using the proposed loadstress model and the actual cyclic behavior of AZ31B, an elastic-plastic solution over the whole domain of cross section was obtained. An energy based fatigue model was then employed to predict the life. The predicted and experimental lives agree well. The proposed method is recommended for correlating the load controlled test with stress and/or strain controlled tests.