Risk Based Optimal Fatigue Testing

Optimal fatigue life testing of materials is considered. Based on minimization of the total expected costs of a mechanical component a strategy is suggested to determine the optimal stress range levels for which additional experiments are to be performed together with an optimal value of the maximum number of load cycles performed before experiment termination. The approach utilizes to a large extent standard statistical and decision theoretical tools and is formulated such that the necessary calculations are easily performed using nested FORM/SORM. The suggested approach is illustrated by an example.