Fatigue Life Predictions of Metal Matrix Composites Using Artificial Neural Networks

In this study, fatigue life predictions for the various metal matrix composites, R ratios, notch geometries, and different temperatures have been performed by using artificial neural networks (ANN) approach. Input parameters of the model comprise various materials (M), such as particle size and volume fraction of reinforcement, stress concentration factor (Kt), R ratio (R), peak stress (S), temperatures (T), whereas, output of the ANN model consist of number of failure cycles. ANN controller was trained with Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) learning algorithm. The tested actual data and predicted data were simulated by a computer program developed on MATLAB platform. It is shown that the model provides intimate fatigue life estimations compared with actual tested data.