The Evolution of Cyclic Plasticity Under Biaxial Conditions

A unique geometry is presented that creates biaxial stresses and strains when subjected to uniaxial loading in order to facilitate further multiaxial fatigue research by reducing the need for the use of specialized multiaxial loading equipment. Cyclic plasticity is a critical process in fatigue and the geometry was successfully designed and fabricated to allow for the continuous monitoring of cyclic plastic strains of magnitude 10^(-4) mm/mm during cyclic loading. Simulation results show that plasticity occurs in a region central to the test specimen while also being subjected to biaxial stresses and strains characterized by average principal direction ratios of 1.18 and 1.39 respectively. Simulation shows fatigue life of the specimen to be 79 thousand cycles, which allows for a reasonable evolution of cyclic plasticity before reaching failure. Issues with the instrumentation process hindered experimental validation of the simulation results.