Fatigue assessment of thick-walled nodular cast iron with regard to highly loaded machine structures using the strainlife approach

For a light-weight design and a safe material and component utilization the cyclic and elastic plastic material behavior of thick-walled structures needs to be included in fatigue analyses. Especially for usage in wind energy applications, thick-walled components such as the hubor the carrier of the nacelle are partially highly loaded by extreme loads due to storms or during grid losses. For this purpose EN-GJS-400-18U-LT has been investigated under constant and variable amplitude loading by means of strain controlled fatigue tests and numerical simulation with special regard to extreme loads and local plastic deformation.