Fatigue failure is a prevalent concern within structural engineering, often resulting in critical safety risks. The inherent complexity of construction projects leads to structural components experiencing loads of varying amplitudes and diverse load paths. Investigating the fatigue response under variable-amplitude and load path conditions is essential for mitigating catastrophic failures. This study presents multiaxial fatigue testing of HRB335, a widely utilized construction steel, by subjecting it to variable-amplitude and path loading protocols. Comparative analysis of several established fatigue cumulative damage models, such as Miner, Manson, Tensile Factor, and Bilinear, was conducted based on experimental data to evaluate their effectiveness in predicting fatigue damage accumulation under these complex loading scenarios. The results indicated that, for variable-amplitude loading, the Miner, Manson, and Tensile Factor models demonstrated reasonable accuracy in residual life estimation, with minor deviations observed. Conversely, the Bilinear model exhibited greater variability and reduced predictive precision. Under variable load path conditions, the Manson nonlinear model provided the most accurate predictions, followed by the Miner and Tensile Factor models, while the Bilinear model underperformed.
Huang et al. (2026) studied this question.