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In this investigation, kinked crack path of friction stir Cu-Al7075-T6 alloy welded joints in four-point bending test conditions has been studied as well as the fatigue lifetime of the welded joints, numerically and experimentally. To do so, four-point bending and fatigue tests of welded specimens have been carried out and the experimental fatigue test data and the kinked crack angles in bending tests have been extracted. Maximum Tangential Stress (MTS) and (KII)min criteria have been used for estimating the kinked crack angles, and Paris law has been applied to predict fatigue crack propagation life of the welded specimens. Functionally graded materials concept has been employed for determining mechanical properties of different regions of welded joints. To do so, the mechanical properties of the weld region such as Young's Modulus and Poisson's ratio have been considered to be linear functions of the positions of the weld region points. It has been shown that, when the original notch is close to the material with the higher fracture toughness (Copper), the kinked crack angle becomes smaller. The results show good agreement between the experimental data and numerical estimations.

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Disjoining of spot welds in steel sheets because of fatigue failure is one of the main reasons for noise in used cars. Fatigue life of spot welding connections of ST12 steel sheets, used in car industry, with 6mm nugget diameter and subjected to uniaxial dynamic shear load is studied and determined in this research. Sheet thickness and other spot welding parameters including weld pitch are considered and compared according to C-G006 standard utilizing the test sample selected according to DIN50165 standard. ABAQUS and FE-SAFE soft wares are used for static and fatigue life analysis respectively. To generate Stress-Number of life cycle (S-N) diagram, the equivalent fully reversed load is determined using Goodman and Gerber theories since the applied load is unidirectional. The resultant finite element results were verified experimentally by a fatigue test machine designed and manufactured during this study by the authors. The finite element results showed a good agreement with Gerber criterion and it was concluded that with increase in sheet thickness, both static strength and fatigue life would be increased. The results also depicts that the weld pitch has no effect on fatigue life. Stress – life graph for 6mm nugget diameter spot weld on ST12 sheet is the most important outputs of this research that can be used in automobile industry.

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Developed novel adaptive controller is suitable for time-varying linear system subject to harmonic reference signal with variable average and amplitude. This controller is experienced successfully at high frequencies on voice coil actuator (VCA) fatigue testing machine which has variable time-varying dynamic. In this applicable approach, assuming having linear system around operation point and slow rate time-variation, tracking control of harmonic reference signal is replaced with regulation control of average and amplitude of harmonic reference signal. In the proposed method, a Single-Input Single-Output (SISO) system estimated by a fourth-order model, is considered as the simplest decoupled Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO). This causes reduction in the amount of computations and no need to complicated hardware. Consequently, the proposed method provides a real-time control for implementation of random harmonic loading with rapid changes in average and amplitude. To complete control objectives, primary control by the PI controller, dynamic saturation blocks and linearization blocks, are employed. Soft start of loading due to PI controller, provides enough time for system identification of adaptive controller and guarantee avoidance of impact on specimen and credibility of fatigue test. In addition, the using of linearization blocks for trajectory planning of command signal and using of dynamic saturation blocks, restrain the overshoot of loading and prevent excitation of unmodelled dynamics. Finally, different materials under different frequency loading are successfully tested.

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Fatigue is one of the most important phenomena in the life determination of parts in various industries. The life determination of the part through the test procedures, due to the real loading (spectral loading) is very complicated. Thus, it is necessary to equalize the fatigue real cycle to test cycles applicable in the laboratory. In this paper, by using the available equations in equalization of fatigue cycles, some equations have been studied for the load spectrum. Then the deviation percentage of these equations has been investigated for two very applicable materials in aviation industries (Aluminum 7075-T6 and Steel 4130) by means of block loading spectrum. It has been observed that the errors is very large and not acceptable in some situations. After that, in order to decrease the errors, a new method has been proposed to determine the number of equivalent cycles in fatigue test, considering equalization of the real load and converting it to an applicable load in the laboratory. In this equalization process, constant amplitude loading was obtained for a sample loading block for each of the mentioned materials in such a way that the rate of fatigue damage to be equal to the real loading. Finally, some standard specimens have been tested by fatigue loading and has been observed that the new proposed procedure is capable to predict the fatigue life. The maximum error is equal to 5.5 per cent.

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A new method was provided to control linear time-varying systems in which the reference signal is a harmonic function with variable amplitude, mean or frequency, such as block loading. The results of practical tests on the voice coil actuator fatigue test machine indicate that this method is robust to noise and disturbance. Also proposed control method compensates unknown time-varying time-delay which leads to bandwidth increase in harmonic loading. On the other hand in this paper the central pattern generator (CPG) was used to design the trajectory of input signal to the main plant. Because of soft applying of changes by CPG, it prevents excitation of high frequency dynamics. To implement the proposed method main plant, which can be estimated with a fourth-order single-input single-output (SISO) model was considered as a two-input two-output (TITO) decoupled system that each relevant input-output is first-order. The level of control loop pairs to each other is investigated by calculation of dynamic relative gain array (DRGA) matrix. The test results also show that loading control was properly carried out in the presence of various uncertainties such as nonlinearities, unmodeled dynamics and time-varying parameters.