A new probabilistic control volume scheme to interpret specimen size effect on fatigue life of additively manufactured titanium alloys

The effect of specimen size on the fatigue performance of additively manufactured (AMed) Ti-6Al-4V is investigated in this paper. The fatigue tests of Ti-6Al-4V specimens made by laser powder bed fusion were conducted via ultrasonic axial cycling up to very-high-cycle regime with stress ratio R = –1. The S-N data of five group specimens show an evident size effect, that is, with the increase of specimen size, the fatigue life or fatigue strength decreasing gradually. A new probabilistic control volume scheme is developed to evaluate the fatigue life of large sized specimens by the tested data of small sized specimens. The applicability of the proposed model is validated by the present data and those of our previous investigation. Moreover, a general form of probabilistic control volume model is derived to show the original and present models are the special cases for conventional cast and AMed alloys.