For the generation of fatigue curves by means of fatigue tests, an ultimate number of cycles must be chosen. This ultimate number of cycles also limits the permissible range of the fatigue curve for the design of components. This introduces extremely high costs for testing components that are to be used in the Very High Cycle Fatigue regime. In this paper, we examine the influence of the ultimate number of cycles of fatigue tests on lifetime prediction for compression springs manufactured from VDSiCr class spring wire. For this purpose, we propose a new kind of experiment, the Artificial Censoring Experiment (ACE). We show that ACEs may be used to permissibly extrapolate the results of fatigue tests on compression springs by ensuring that a batch-specific minimum ultimate number of cycles has been exceeded in testing. If the minimum ultimate number of cycles has not been exceeded, extrapolation is inadmissible. Extrapolated results may be highly non-conservative, especially for models assuming a pronounced fatigue limit.
Keywords: FKM guideline; SWOSC-V; VDSiCr; VHCF; compressions springs; fatigue; spring steel.