Recent advances on notch effects in metal fatigue: A review

Notch features including holes, fillets, shoulders, and grooves commonly exist in engineering components. When subjected to external loads, these geometrical discontinuities generally act as stress raisers and thus present significant influences on the component strength and life, which are more remarkable under complex loading paths. Accordingly, numerous theories and approaches have been developed to address notch effects in metal fatigue as well as damage modelling and life predictions, which aim to provide theoretical support for structural optimal design and integrity evaluation. However, most of them are self-styled or focus on specific objects, which limits their engineering applicability. This review recalls recent developments and achievements in notch fatigue modelling and analysis of metals. In particular, four commonly used methods for fatigue evaluation of metallic notched components/structures are summarized and elaborated, namely, nominal stress approaches, local stress-strain approaches, and critical distance theories and weighting control parameters-based approaches, which intend to provide a reference for further research on notch fatigue analysis and promote the integration and/or development among different approaches for practice. © 2020 Wiley Publishing Ltd.