Short course/CPD
Introduction to Fatigue and Fracture Analysis
Course date: Please enquire
Course overview

The School of Engineering at Cranfield has, for many years, had one of the largest programmes in the world of short courses in Gas Turbine Technology.
The course aims to enable delegates to determine the life cycle of machines and machine components. On completion of the course, the attendee will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the basic concepts and theories of fatigue and fracture and be able to adopt them to undertake calculations.
Location
Cranfield University is located at the very heart of the UK – within the innovation triangle between London and the cities of Oxford and Cambridge.
Our central location provides easy access from the M1, excellent main line rail service as well as proximity to key international airports. Set in rolling countryside, Cranfield offers a rich, rural landscape complemented by thriving towns and picturesque villages.
- Road: We are just 10 minutes from Junctions 13 & 14 of the M1 motorway. There is free parking on campus.
- Rail: Milton Keynes or Bedford
- Air: London Luton (22 miles), Heathrow (50 miles) or Birmingham (70 miles).
Course fee:
£1,270
Accommodation fee:
How to register
Further information
For more information on this course or booking details please contact:
Power and Propulsion short courses
T: + 44 (0) 1234 754683
E: k.swan@cranfield.ac.uk
Course description
Who should attend
There are no particular requirements for those attending this course except an interest in Cyclic Failure. The standard of the course is fairly fundamental, that is, it is not a forum for the latest theories, and the mathematics involved are fairly basic. Accordingly, attendees will derive additional benefit from the varied backgrounds and experience drawn from many UK and overseas organisations.
Content Summary
In this course it is intended to introduce members to the problems involved in lifing machines, or machine components, for cyclic loading. It will deal with what is, without doubt, the most damaging of the failure modes, which we know as fatigue, arising as it does from the repeated application of a load, as for example when we re-use a gas turbine many times (LCF) or when a component within the gas turbine vibrates (HCF).
It is not intended to dwell on the metallurgical nature of fatigue but instead to introduce course members to some of the basic concepts, and resulting methods of calculation, with the aid of which engineers have managed to design for fatigue over the years. Calculating techniques from both the well-established fatigue design approach (SN Diagrams, Goodman Diagrams, Neuber Rule etc) and from the fracture mechanics approach (Stress Intensity, Paris Curve, Walker etc) will be used.
Fatigue and fracture are essentially two sides of the same coin since they both give us insight into the nature of cyclic failure and both allow us to determine the cyclic life of a component under particular conditions. Of course, fatigue is almost completely empirical in nature and based upon experience of broken components going back to the age when wheels first fell off railway rolling stock. Fracture, whilst still leaning heavily on practical test, is much more analytical in nature, being based upon an analytical model of the small flaw (imperfection) which all failed components can be assumed to have held before finally leading to their failure.The course is liberally sprinkled with worked examples.
Topics
- Brief overview of conventional stress based lifing methods and the estimation of factor of safety using Goodman Diagrams.
- Multi-axial fatigue: The use of Sines method to estimate equivalent mean and alternating stresses.
- Cycle counting methods involving variation in fatigue stress concentration factor, in particular the ‘Rainflow Cycle Counting Method’.
- Low cycle fatigue:
a. The significance of using strain based methods as opposed to stress based
methods
b. The use of the Neuber and Linear rules in conjunction with the Coffin and - Manson equation or Manson’s Equal Slopes equation to estimate the cyclic life of a component
- Introduction to linear elastic fracture mechanics and the use of the Paris equation to estimate the cracked life of a component.
- Lifing philosophies including deterministic, damage tolerance and probabilistic methodologies.
For further information please contact:
Mrs Claire Bellis
School of Engineering, Whittle Building
Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedford
MK43 0AL, UK
T: +44 (0) 1234 754683
F: +44 (0) 1234 758208
E: c.bellis@cranfield.ac.uk
Course Director





