Fatigue testing varies greatly from application to application. Below are some of the top six examples to showcase how fatigue testing has become invaluable in a range of industries.
The cracked round bar method is an exciting new standard that has been developed to test polyethylene materials, pipes, and fittings. Polyethylene is being used increasingly for these applications due to the strong, tough, and durable nature of the material enabling it to provide both a long service and low life cycle costs. The purpose of the standard is to accelerate the process of determining the fracture mechanical behavior of the material and ranking the different PE pipe grades. Since polyethylene is so resistant to crack initiation and slow crack growth (SCG), most tests carried out to resolve the properties take an unacceptably long time. This standard speeds the testing up by reducing the dimensions of the specimen and altering the cyclic loading regime. ISO 18489 is undertaken at room temperature to conform to practical conditions and ensure that the material structure is not affected by over heating/cooling. No liquids are present in the test environment for the same reason.