Experimental and Numerical Study of Stirrup Fatigue

People life remains always one of the impressive conditions to be respected essentially if it is connected to very high places. Indeed, for scaffolding lifespan of each part used must be highlighted to respect the 'SAFETY' condition. There are various accidents, even fatal, which have been seen during scaffolding and examples are very numerous following fatigue problem fatigue of uncontrolled parts. This paper focuses on fatigue problem of a part called 'stirrup' commonly used in construction scaffolding. An expertise of existing state part considered took place through mechanical characterization, microhardness as well as finite element modeling. Johnson-Cook model was used to compare the hysteresis curves of two methods namely experimental and that of finite elements (FEM). The numerical technique XFEM was established to model crack growth into Stirrup. Result shows that hardening phenomenon and fatigue (cracks) are the main causes of stirrup premature damage. Crack growth stages were depicted to show fatigue zones as well as crack path and stirrup bending.