Experimental and analytical study of random fatigue, in time and frequencies domain, on an industrial wheel

Industrial wheels are components subject to fatigue under a high number of stress cycles, depending on the type of vehicle they are installed to. The reliability of these components is strictly dependent on the accuracy of the fatigue validation method adopted. A common practice in the industry is to test loads under constant amplitude in laboratory through fatigue and test parameters according to the standards used in the industry. The object of this research is to compare the results in terms of damage and the number of failure cycles, adopting both the time domain and frequency domain approach on a real industrial component. Different theories were developed and applied to the real case of study of an industrial wheel, under specific load cases. Eventually, we applied different criteria to the numerical analysis. The added value of this study is the application of the fatigue criteria on a real industrial component, in order to check the reliability of the criteria. Eventually, we determined that the results show that, for these specific experimental load conditions, frequency-domain methods are a bit more conservative than time-domain methods.