A New Dominance Distribution Method to Select Materials with Higher Fatigue Resistance under Property Scatter and Load Uncertainty

The fatigue properties of materials are dispersive and vary with service loads. Few methods can be used to guide the selection of materials in anti-fatigue design. In this study, for the first time, a new dominance distribution method to select the materials with higher fatigue resistance is proposed by the quantification of the scatter of fatigue lives and strengths and the simulation of possible load histories; accordingly, two kinds of diagrams are developed to display the dominance distributions of longer fatigue lives for the materials bearing cyclic constant and variable amplitude loads. After the fatigue tests of two Al-Si casting alloys, the dominance distribution method was used for their comparisons. The results indicate that the dominance distributions can clearly display the longer fatigue lives of the materials under different possible loading distributions and different reliability design index, and the dominance distribution diagrams can facilitate engineers to quickly select the materials with higher fatigue resistance.