Metal Fatigue—Past, Current and Future

Metal fatigue has been a problem for more than 150 years, but because of rapid developments in fracture mechanics analyses, possibly at the expense of the traditional approach based on cyclic deformation processes, afar better understanding of fatigue failure behaviour has recently been achieved. Consequently the engineer now has the basic tools at his/her disposal to make good assessments of the numerous factors that control the fatigue lifetime of engineering materials, components and structures. Additionally, more intensive interdisciplinary research studies involving chemists, materials scientists, mathematicians and physicists—but engineering led—have generated both greater insights into long-known industrial problems and routes to required solutions. This paper traces the growth of recent developments in understanding metal fatigue from the days of our mentors to the present day, and concludes with a brief review of some future research areas that are now available for exploitation.