Evaluating Damage Accumulation Models as Potential Alternatives to Miner's Rule: A Comparative Validation with Aluminum Alloys

Introduced in 1945, Miner's Rule has become the most commonly used damage accumulation model for fatigue life estimation, despite its sometimes inaccurate estimates. Models to enhance accuracy have always been desired, but research efforts have tended towards representing the underlying physics of fatigue failure mechanisms rather than retaining the practicality of Miner's Rule. Thus, a more accurate model than Miner's Rule which retains its ease of use has yet to be recognized in the literature. This present work identifies a model with such potential for aluminum alloys. A sample set of 185 aluminum alloy specimens from an open-source fatigue test database is used to compare the performance of Miner's Rule with that of ten other models taken from a historical literature review of damage accumulation model development since 1945. A modified version of the Marco-Starkey model shows reliably consistent and superior performance to both Miner's Rule and the other models examined while retaining the ease of use possessed by Miner's Rule. More validation work against other alloy systems (Ti alloys, steels, etc.) is needed before this model can be recommended to replace Miner's Rule, but its performance with aluminum alloys suggests it could potentially do that.