Mechanical behavior and buckling failure of sharp-notched circular tubes under cyclic bending

In this paper, an experimental investigation of the mechanical behavior and buckling failure of sharp-notched circular tubes subjected to cyclic bending is discussed. The unnotched and sharp-notched circular tubes of SUS 304 stainless steel were tested under symmetric curvature-controlled cyclic bending. It was found from moment-curvature curves that the loops show cyclic hardening and gradually steady after a few cycles for all tested tubes. The ovalization-curvature curves show an unsymmetric, ratcheting and increasing manner with the number of cycles. In addition, it was found that six almost parallel lines corresponding to unnotched and five different notch-depth (0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 mm) tubes were noted from the experimental relationship between the cyclic controlled curvature and the number of cycles necessary to produce buckling on a log-log scale. An empirical formulation was proposed so that it could be used for simulating the aforementioned relationship. By comparing with the experimental finding, the simulation was in good agreement with the experimental data.