The choice of cyclic plasticity models in fatigue life assessment of 304 and 1045 steel alloys based on the critical plane-energy fatigue damage approach

Abstract The present study intends to examine various cyclic plasticity models in fatigue assessment of 304 and 1045 steels based on the critical plane-energy damage approach developed earlier. Cyclic plasticity models of linear hardening, nonlinear, multi-surface, and two-surface were chosen to study fatigue damage and life of materials under proportional and non-proportional loading conditions. The effect of additional hardening induced due to non-proportional loading in 1045 steel and particularly in 304 steel was further evaluated as different constitutive models were employed. In the present study, the plasticity models were calibrated by the equivalent cyclic stress–strain curves. The merits of the models were then investigated to assess materials deformation under proportional and non-proportional loading conditions. Under non-proportional loading, the cyclic plasticity models were found to be highly dependent upon the employed hardening rule as well as the materials properties/coefficients. The stress and strain components calculated through constitutive laws were then used as input parameters to evaluate fatigue damage and assess the fatigue life of materials based on the critical plane-energy approach. The calculated values of stress components based on constitutive laws resulted in a good agreement with those of experimentally obtained under various loading paths of proportional and non-proportional conditions in 1045 steels. In 304 steel, the calculated stress components were however found in good agreement when plasticity models were employed for proportional loading conditions. Under non-proportional loading, the application of the multi-surface plasticity model in conjunction with the fatigue damage approach resulted in more reasonable results as compared with other plasticity models. This can be attributed to the motion of the yield surface in deviatoric stress space in the multi-surface model encountering additional hardening effect through estimated higher stress values under non-proportional loading conditions. Predicted fatigue lives based on the critical plane-energy damage approach showed such range of agreements as ±1.05–±3.0 factors in 1045 and 304 steels as compared with experimental life data when various constitutive plasticity models were employed.