TY - CONF A1 - Madia, Mauro A1 - Gao, J. A1 - Kruse, Julius A1 - Werner, Tiago A1 - Duarte, Larissa T1 - Determination of the Kitagawa-Takahashi diagram for the EA4T railway axle steel by means of the cyclic R-curve method N2 - The Kitagawa-Takahashi (KT) diagram is a well-established tool in the fatigue community for the prediction of the fatigue limit of metallic materials in presence of defects. Nevertheless, its determination is associated with a large number of fatigue tests carried out on specimens with artificial defects (notches) to describe the fatigue limit-defect size relationship in the short crack regime. The preparation of the specimens and the execution of the tests is time expensive. Therefore, few phenomenological models have been introduced in the past to provide a first approximation of the KT diagram based solely on the fatigue limit for smooth specimen and the fatigue crack propagation threshold for long cracks. Despite the use of such models is widely spread, these suffer from problems related to the uncertainties of the material parameters. Furthermore, the mechanics of short cracks, which is the physical mechanism behind the concept of the fatigue limit, is not considered. This work discusses the advantages and drawbacks of using short fatigue crack propagation models for predicting the fatigue limit of flawed metallic materials. The KT diagrams for a EA4T railway axle steel in as-received and full-hardened condition are approximated by means of the cyclic R-curve method. T2 - 13th International Fatigue Congress CY - Hiroshima, Japan DA - 06.11.2023 KW - Fatigue limit KW - Crack propagation KW - Short crack KW - Cyclic R-curve KW - EA4T railway axle steel PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-58867 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -