Fatigue calcluations of hydraulic quick couplings : Method and calculations considering fatigue limits

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the fatigue life of two components in different hydraulic quick couplings. The crack which initiates the fatigue failure usually occurs in the bottom of one of the threads. Thus, the threads in the coupling are carefully investigated. A few different approaches for determining the fatigue life are studied for each component. CAD (Computer Aided Design) models for both components are created and analyzed with FEM (Finite Element Method). By analyzing these components with FEM the stresses and the strains are calculated. These values for stress and strain are used to determine the fatigue life for the different components. The first component is suffering from high cycle fatigue. Four different approaches for high cycle fatigue are investigated. These four are Wöhler-curve, Haigh-diagram, von Mises fatigue criterion and Mises-Sines fatigue criterion. It was found that all of them but the von Mises fatigue criterion give a good approximation of the fatigue life. von Mises fatigue criterion does not consider the midstress, which can be a reason for this. The three other approaches indicate that the component will be suffering from fatigue, but will be relatively close to infinite life. The Wöhler-curve indicates that the component will withstand about 470 000 loading cycles. Compared to the experimental tests where the component withstands about 700 000 loading cycles, it can be said that the approach is a good estimation of the fatigue life. Approximated material data are used. For further work it is essential to obtain experimental material data for better approximation of the fatigue life. The second component is suffering from low cycle fatigue, which means that different approaches are needed. The approaches are originally from Coffin-Manson and Morrow. A total of four low cycle fatigue criterion have been studied. The first one is made by CoffinManson and takes the plastic strain in to account, the second is made by Morrow and takes both the elastic and the plastic strain in to account. The third is a modification of Morrow’s criterion, and will consider the midstresses as well. The fourth is a simplification of Morrow’s criterion where more common material parameters are used. These four have been compared and it can be seen that the CoffinManson criterion gives the best approximation of the reality. The Coffin-Manson criterion gives an approximation of 50 000 loading cycles to fatigue failure which, compared to that the experimental tests suffered from fatigue failure after about 40 000 loading cycles, is a good estimation of the fatigue life