Metal fatigue is an essential consideration for engineers and researchers who are looking at factors that cause metals to fail through stress, corrosion, etc. This is an English translation of a book originally published in Japan in 1993, with an additional two chapters on the fatigue failure of steels and the effect of surface roughness on fatigue strength. The methodology is based on important and reliable results and may be usefully applied to other fatigue problems not directly treated in this book.

This book contains the fully peer-reviewed papers presented at the Third Engineering Foundation Conference on Small Fatigue Cracks, held under the chairmanship of K.S. Ravichandran and Y. Murakami during December 6-11, 1998, at the Turtle Bay Hilton, Oahu, Hawaii. This book presents a state-of-the-art description of the mechanics, mechanisms and applications of small fatigue cracks by most of the world's leading experts in this field. Topics ranging from the mechanisms of crack initiation, small crack behavior in metallic, intermetallic, ceramic and composite materials, experimental...