Prof Ahmad Varvani-Farahani from Ryerson University, Canada visited WIT to present a short course entitled Advanced Fatigue Fracture Analysis. Over a period of three days lectures were presented on the following topics:

• Overview of stress and strain states
• Overview of materials behaviour and properties
• Cyclic stress/ strain- fatigue life
• The elements of elastic and plastic behaviour of materials
• Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM)
• Crack tip plasticity, R curves, and Fracture toughness
• Materials selection for components subjected to cyclic loading
• Fatigue damage and cycle counting analyses
• Stress concentration factor, stress raiser effect on fatigue life
• Crack growth rate and fatigue life prediction
• The effect of mean stress on fatigue life of engineering components
• Fracture surface analysis

This three-day course was designed to cover two specific areas: practical-analytical aspects of fatigue failure and fracture mechanics, and materials issues such as materials selection for engineering components and structures subjected to fatigue loading.

Topics covered included: fundamental concepts of fracture mechanics and fatigue behaviour of materials, fracture design and failure analysis for monotonic and cyclic loaded components, practical application, the stress intensity factor and J integral for monotonic and cyclic loading, fatigue and fracture data analysis, fatigue crack initiation and growth of engineering components subjected to the uniaxial and multiaxial fatigue loading conditions.

Dr. Varvani is an associate professor who has worked in the area of fatigue and fracture of materials for the last 14 years. He is the author of over 25 refereed journal papers and the editor of three books on Fatigue and Fracture. He has also been a Fellow of Wessex Institute, UK since 2004.