About: Static fatigue

Static fatigue describes material weakening which happens at a stress level that is less than that required to cause an ordinary tensile fracture. While fatigue is generally the result of repeated application and relaxation of stresses, static fatigue occurs during prolonged and constant application of stress, where defects in the material and environmental factors are gradually amplified until the tensile strength of the material falls below the applied stress, or the stress pattern changes in such a way that certain areas have stress exceeding the tensile strength. This can occur through several means, such as plastic flow or crack propagation. It is also called “delayed fracture”, referring to the long period of time the crack takes to grow large enough to cause structural failure. It i