The NAFEMS Eastern European 2020 Virtual Conference took place on the 23rd and 24th of September 2020. The event gave participants access to high level presentations in the field of structural mechanics, computational fluid dynamics, electromagnetics and discrete element methods.

Resource Abstract

This presentation reviews the history of fatigue design and simulation. Starting with the famous DeHavilland Comet story, it highlights how a succession of devastating fatigue failures ruined the reputation of the world’s first commercial jet airliner. The physics behind these failures is introduced and it shows how they are successfully modelled using a basic simulation technique dating back to August Wohler in 1852.

Long before the invention of computers and pocket calculators, engineers developed

mathematical models to simulate progressive failure through fatigue cracking. The

presentation considers both phenomenological (or statistics-based) simulation models, and constitutive (or physics-based) models. It shows how the sophisticated fatigue models used today are a successful combination of these two approaches.