Issues With Multiaxial Fatigue Assessment in the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code

This work analyzes the applicability of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code procedures to calculate fatigue crack initiation under multiaxial stresses and/or strains, in particular when caused by non-proportional loads that lead the principal directions at the critical point to vary with time, e.g. due to out-of-phase bending and torsion loads induced by independent sources. Classic uniaxial fatigue damage models are usually inappropriate for analyzing multiaxial loads, since they can generate highly inaccurate predictions. Moreover, it is shown that the ASME procedures can lead to non-conservative results for non-proportional load histories.