Equivalent damage: A critical assessment

The overall goal of achieving improved life cycle management of aircraft engine, gas turbine components is a major industry thrust. Low cycle fatigue (LCF) crack initiation prediction, an important element of life cycle management as traditionally applied, may be overly conservative in estimating total cyclic life capability. Consequently, there is increasing pressure to improve predictive methods both for crack initiation and for subsequent crack propagation. The utility of equivalent damage concepts for application to hot section components of aircraft engines was studied. Specifically, the topics examined were mean stress, cumulative damage, and multiaxiality. Other factors inherently linked to this study were the basic formulation of damage parameters at elevated temperatures and the fact that hot section components experience severe temperature fluctuations throughout their service lifetime.