We have participated in an interview for Quality Magazine on the topic of fatigue testing in the automobile industry:
In a regulated consumer industry, it is vital to test everything from individual components and materials to major assemblies and crash structures. But while the automotive sector has specific requirements for testing materials and components, the principles of fatigue remains the same both across industries and within the scope of automobiles themselves. Fatigue is anything that involves alternating, or cyclic, stress or strain, and this loading can cause damage or cracking at stresses that are well below the yield strength of the material or component, explains Element Engaged Expert Dr. John Tartaglia. “We refer to cycles of 100 to 10,000 as low cycle fatigue (LCF), and more than 10,000 is referred to as high cycle fatigue (HCF),” he continues. “This can be significant given that cars, or their components, may well have many millions of cycles. To gain insight into fatigue testing in the modern automotive industry, Quality talked more with Tartaglia, along with experts Alex Johnson, an applications engineer for Instron, and Steve Panter, chief engineer for the automotive Americas’ division of Exova Group.
Read the full article here.