A Study on Fatigue Damage Modeling Using Back-Propagation Neural Networks

It is important to evaluate fatigue damage of in-service material in respect to assure safety and remaining fatigue life in structure and mechanical components under cyclic load . Fatigue damage is represented by mathematical modelling with crack growth rate da/dN and cycle ration N/Nf and is detected by X-ray diffraction and ultrasonic wave method etc. But this is estimated generally by single parameter but influenced by many test conditions The characteristics of it indicates fatigue damage has complex fracture mechanism. Therefore, in this study we propose that back-propagation neural networks on the basis of ration of X-ray half-value breath B/Bo, fractal dimension Df and fracture mechanical parameters can construct artificial intelligent networks estimating crack growth rate da/dN and cycle ratio N/Nf without regard to stress amplitude Δ σ.