Why Do a Fatigue Test?
In many applications, materials are subjected to vibrating or oscillating forces. The behavior of materials under such load conditions differs from the behavior under a static load. Because the material is subjected to repeated load cycles (fatigue) in actual use, designers are faced with predicting fatigue life, which is defined as the total number of cycles to failure under specified loading conditions. Fatigue testing gives much better data to predict the in-service life of materials.
