The Fatigue of Metals: with Chapters on the Fatigue of Wood and of Concrete

Abstract

EVEEY advance in engineering practice makes new demands on the materials used in construction, especially in regard to their resistance to fatigue and to the action of prolonged stress. The authors of this book have themselves carried out exceedingly thorough investigations into the behaviour of steels and other engineering materials towards repeated stress, and these have been described in reports which are well known to all students of the subject. They have now written a manual of fatigue which will be indispensable to engineers. The treatment of the subject, a highly controversial one, is scrupulously fair, and the authors generously dedicate the volume to the British investigators who have done so much to advance this study. The various types of machine which may be used to produce alternating stress by bending, by tension and compression, or by torsion, are described and illustrated, and the results obtained by the several methods are compared. Numerous tables and diagrams sum up the results of tests, and the application to engineering practice is well illustrated by examples. On the theoretical side the treatment is cautious, and the account of changes in microscopic structure is rather meagre, so that the general effect on a scientific reader is less stimulating than that of the work on the same subject by Gough, but the authors no doubt feel bound to extend the data still further before attempting broad generalisations. Some account is given of the relation between fatigue and ‘creep,’ which is of undoubted importance, and deserves further study. Short chapters on the fatigue of wood and concrete are added, and there is an excellent bibliography. Text and diagrams are clearly printed.

The Fatigue of Metals: with Chapters on the Fatigue of Wood and of Concrete.

Prof.

H. F.

Moore

Prof.

J. B.

Kommers

By. Pp. xi + 326. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc.; London: McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., Ltd., 1927.) 20s. net.