Standards-based technologies for exchanging fatigue test data

Fatigue testing campaigns are a common feature in the design and operation of advanced engineering systems in the aerospace and power generation sectors. The resulting data are typically of a high inherent technical and financial value. Presently, these data are typically transferred between departments and companies by way of ad-hoc solutions reliant on obsolete or proprietary technologies, including CSV files, MS Excel^® files, and PDFs. In these circumstances there is significant potential for data loss, inconsistency, and error. To address these shortcomings, there is a need for a systematic means of transferring data between different digital systems. With this in mind, a series of CEN Workshops on engineering materials data have taken place with a view to developing technologies for representing and exchanging engineering materials data. Most recently, a CEN Workshop on the topic of fatigue test data has delivered data formats derived from the ISO 12106 standard for axial strain-controlled fatigue testing. This paper describes the methodology for developing the data formats and demonstrates their use in the scope of the INCEFA-PLUS project on increasing safety in nuclear power plants by covering gaps in environmental fatigue assessment.