Cycle distribution and fatigue damage assessment in broad-band non-Gaussian random processes

The aim of the paper is to propose a method to assess the cycle distribution and the fatigue damage in stationary broad-band non-Gaussian processes; the method is a further development of an existing procedure proposed for Gaussian processes [Int J Fatigue 2002; 24(11)]. By introducing a suitable transformation, we link a non-Gaussian process to an underlying Gaussian one, for which we can estimate the cumulative distribution of counted cycles; the corresponding joint density for the non-Gaussian process is then derived. The analysis of time histories measured on Mountain-bikes in off-road tracks shows that the new method is able to correctly assess the distribution of ‘rainflow’ counted cycles taking into account the non-normality of the load.