When designing structural and mechanical components, general structural integrity criteria must be met in order to ensure a valid performance according to its designed function, that is, supporting loads or resisting any kind of action causing stress and strains to the material without catastrophic failure. For these reasons, the development of solutions to manage the test conditions, failure mechanism, damage evolution, component functionalities and loading types should be implemented. The aim of this Special Issue "Probabilistic Mechanical Fatigue and Fracture of Materials" is to contribute to updating current and future state-of-the-art methodologies that promote an objective material characterization and the development of advanced damage models that ensure a feasible transferability from the experimental results to the design of real components. This is imbricated in some probabilistic background related to theoretical and applied fracture and fatigue theories, and advanced numerical models applied to some real application examples.
Keywords: elastic and plastic materials; environmental assisted fatigue; failure criterion; fatigue; fracture mechanics; generalized driving force; phenomenological models; probabilistic life prediction.