This course is designed to enable the participant to study examples and develop new design skills, rather than simply listing a collection of technical facts.  By examining difficult design problems not previously  encountered encourages the engineer to use intuition, physics, math and a lot of guessing and testing.  Intuition is good in many cases, but often intuition and common knowledge do not serve us well when the situation is new and unique.  When faced with a question about whether a mechanical part is going to survive its service life, the powers of observation, logic and problem-solving skills are needed.  The many sources of information that are available today that did not exist 40 years ago are also helpful.  Considerations of factors that affect fatigue life of machine parts are explored in detail in the course.  Descriptions of the most common causes of fatigue failures are also included with options on how to avoid them.  Though the examples in this lesson are not cases that most engineers will encounter in their careers, they are instructive for developing these valuable skills.  

After completing the course, students will be able to:

Describe common fatigue failures

Discuss the relationship between stress level and number of cycles

Define endurance limit and service life

Discuss endurance limit in extreme life cycle applications

Describe the flaw in the endurance limit theory

Discuss how welding defects reduce fatigue life

Describe how manufacturing methods can affect fatigue life

State the obvious over-arching method to reduce fatigue failures

Design for rotary bending

Avoid fatigue in bolted joints

Prevent vibration-induced fatigue failures

Identify pitfalls associated with extending designs and drafting errors

Estimate bearing fatigue life

Describe the relationship between buckling and fatigue life