Prediction of Fatigue Lifetime Using a Wavelet Transformation Induced Multi-time Scaling Method and Xfem

Abstract

AbstractFatigue lifetime prediction due to dynamic crack growth is a significant issue for design and manufacture of engineering components. Damage accumulation in a material on the micro-scale is a main physical mechanism governing crack initiation. For high-cycle fatigue, the number of loading cycles leading to catastrophic fatigue failure can be of the order of millions. The simulation of such processes would be extremely expensive and time-consuming using conventional single time scale methods. In order to overcome this challenging requirement, a wavelet-transformation based multi-time scaling method is successfully adopted in this research to accelerate the prediction of accumulated damage for a large number loading cycles. In this work, the WATMUS technique is coupled with gradient- enhanced damage and the extended finite element method to simulate dynamic crack propagation for a turbine blade.