Issues encountered in the application of multiaxial fatigue strength methods to experiments with various stress distributions

Abstract This paper attempts to describe the effect of a non-constant stress distribution on the fatigue strength of unnotched hollow specimens of various sizes and loaded by different load combinations. The chosen solution evaluates the critical volume, which decides the level of fatigue damage. It relates dimensions of these critical entities to component fatigue strengths, which replace the material parameters in multiaxial fatigue strength criteria. The output shows that the proposed critical volume method is a promising solution. The PCRN and MMP multiaxial fatigue strength methods result in the best prediction outputs from the seven methods assessed here.