Experimental validation of a fracture plane model for multiaxial cyclic loading

Several approaches have been conceived in order to analyse the high-cycle fatigue behaviour of metallic structures under multiaxial cyclic loading. According to the critical plane approach, for example, the fatigue fracture plane is determined on the basis of the amplitudes or values of certain stress components or a combination of them. By applying the weight function method, the present authors have recently proposed to correlate the orientation of the critical fracture plane with the averaged principal stress directions. In this paper, experimental data collected from the relevant literature, concerning different types of metals under out-of-phase sinusoidal normal and shear stress states, are examined to assess the predictive capabilities of some critical plane criteria, also including the model developed by the authors.