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- Posted By: George Laird
Fatigue Analysis: ASME Section VIII, Division 2, Part 5.5 Protection Against Failure from Cyclic Loading
Even with an academic and experimental background in fatigue analysis, it is daunting to provide a hard, no-nonsense life-cycle prediction. It becomes especially daunting when your fatigue prediction can cost or save your client millions of dollars. Plus, there are tons of computer programs that promise “instant fatigue nirvana” at the press of a button; which leads one to ask: “What is a poor engineer supposed to do?” Over the years, we have learned that there are three critical components to a quality fatigue analysis: i.) accurate FEA stress results, ii.) accurate FEA stress results and iii.) accurate FEA stress results. Okay, sad, old, real-estate joke about location, location, and location; but let us just imagine that your stress numbers are good, then what? Fatigue analysis is all about the protection of structures and systems against failure from cyclic loading. This is where the ASME Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code (BPVC) provides a tried and true standard that, if your stress numbers are good, then you can be assured that your fatigue prediction will be conservative.