Topic of the Special Session:

 

Fatigue of Metals continues to be a very challenging topic of research. There are still a lot of questions to be answered to understand fatigue mechanisms. Recent years have seen a growing interest in fatigue failures starting from the inside of a part or specimen although classical fatigue cracks are normally expected to start at the material surface. There seem to be two governing reasons for internal crack initiation and grow:

 

• The increased surface quality of parts reduces the probability of surface failure.

 

• At low load amplitudes and correspondingly long fatigue life times there are failures below the classical fatigue limit, which are investigated in very high cycle fatigue (VHCF)-research projects. These failures are often accompanied by modifications of the fatigue fracture surface at the crack initiation site, called fine granular area (FGA), optical dark area (ODA), or granular bright facet (GBF).

 

The goal of the proposed session is to discuss current results on the interior fatigue crack initiation and growth in metals with leading researchers in this field.