Fatigue Design 2011: A full array of warmly welcomed remedies

The 4th International Conference on Fatigue Design, held in Cetim's premises in Senlis (France) on 23 and 24 November 2011, captivated and surprised visitors . It was captivating because of the full array of remedies presented to control fatigue. Surprising because of the high number of participants who came to present their innovations and find solutions to their own problems. Go to "News", then "Videos" to see the summary in images.

Despite the current economic situation, 265 specialists, experts from universities and industrialists came from 16 countries to meet in Cetim's premises in Senlis (France) for this 4th Fatigue Design Conference. During the scientific and technical exchanges, new themes appeared, such as fatigue in biomechanics, fatigue of composite materials or fatigue in vibratory environments. Three themes to which reliabilistic approach in fatigue should be added… This is a real challenge as the aim is to break the taboo about safety coefficients in order to get to the most accurate design.

In total, participants attended 66 conferences of a very high technical and scientific level given by academics as well as by R&D teams from various companies.

The participating industrialists (they were 70% in the same situation) declared that they came to find answers to their daily problems, in addition to their awakening to the latest breakthroughs made by research teams.

And there were many questions asked! What are the risks of failure of parts under service loading? How to reach a target reliability level? How to improve design rules to reach this target?

The answers encompassed various R&D approaches, such as control of process parameters to obtain suitable material properties. The R&D results concerning design methods also met industrialists' expectations. At the heart of concerns: structure modelling and creation of connections between the various design phases and the material implementation processes. Also on the menu: the best experimental methods for product development (characterisation of materials and implementation processes, prototype validation method, test engineering know-how, tests-calculations coupling, etc.).

The most significant moment of the Conference was the presentation of the Best Poster Award. The winner was Guénhaël Le Quilliec, a young doctorand from the Ecole Centrale de Nantes and from Supméca. He won the prize offered (an iPAD2) thanks to the quality of his poster dedicated to the fatigue design of welded joints treated by high-frequency hammer peening. Today, this process is becoming more widely used in the finishing of welding joints.

Click here to access the video of the Conference. (Our photo shows Garry Marquis, Professor at the Aalto University (Finland), member of the Fatigue Design 2011 scientific committee and Chairman of the International Institute of Welding (IIW), as well as Mansour Afzali, from Cetim).

Contact:

mailto:sqr@cetim.fr

(11/30/2011)