Multiaxial fatigue life estimation of defective aluminum alloy considering the microstructural heterogeneities effect

Abstract

The Al–Si–Mg high-cycle fatigue behavior is mainly affected by the microstructural heterogeneities and the presence of casting defects. This attempt aims to develop an analytical approach based on the evaluation of the highly stressed volume caused by local porosities and defined as the affected area methodology. The proposed approach is able to predict the aluminum alloy fatigue response by considering the effect of microstructure described by the secondary dendrite arm spacing and its correlation with the defect size effect. A representative elementary volume model is implemented to evaluate the stress distribution in the vicinity of the defect and to determine its impact on the high-cycle fatigue resistance. Work hardening due to cyclic loading is considered by applying the Lemaitre–Chaboche model. The Kitagawa–Takahashi diagrams corresponding to different microstructures and for two loading ratios: R σ = 0 and R σ = −1 were simulated based on the AA method. Simulations were compared to the experimental results carried out on cast aluminium alloy A356 with T6 post heat-treatment. The results show clearly that the proposed approach provides a good estimation of the A356-T6 fatigue limit and exhibits good ability in simulating the Kitagawa–Takahashi diagrams for fine and coarse microstructures.