QuesTek’s ICMD® platform launches advanced fatigue toolkit
March 24, 2025
QuesTek Innovations LLC, Evanston, Illinois, USA, has announced the expansion of the ICMD® materials design and engineering platform with a Fatigue Toolkit, developed to enable users to predict fatigue life as a function of material, microstructure, and loading scenario.
This enhanced feature of the ICMD® platform represents a significant leap forward in fatigue analysis, leveraging mechanistic, physics-based modelling to improve prediction accuracy and engineering efficiency. This proven approach to modelling minimum fatigue life can be combined with limited testing using the Accelerated Insertion of Materials (AIM) methodology within ICMD® to save a reported 70% in testing costs vs traditional full design of experiments approaches for qualification of fatigue critical materials.
The ICMD® Fatigue Toolkit combines physics-based simulations with microstructure and defect digital twins, enabling engineers in an effort to improve safety, reduce costs, and make data-driven decisions for material selection, design, and deployment.
Addressing industry challenges
Current state-of-the-art fatigue modelling primarily relies on empirical data fitting or linear elastic fracture mechanics, both of which have significant limitations. Empirical models lack the predictive capability and require large safety factors, leading to costly over-engineering. Fracture mechanics approaches – while useful – only address macroscopic crack propagation after significant damage has already occurred.
The ICMD® Fatigue Toolkit introduces microstructure-sensitive fatigue modelling using crystal plasticity simulations to enable engineers to predict crack formation and microstructurally small crack growth phases, which is particularly crucial for high-cycle fatigue applications. By incorporating microstructural attributes, this approach reduces reliance on conservative safety factors, leading to both safer and more cost-efficient engineering solutions.
Industry applications
ICMD®’s Fatigue Toolkit has already demonstrated success in industry engagements, helping companies optimise material selection, enhance supplier qualification requirements, and accelerate certification processes. Examples include:
- Material selection trade studies – Used in aerospace applications to evaluate high-cycle fatigue performance of various competing alloys, enabling physics-informed material selection.
- Supplier qualification optimisation – Helps OEMs define more precise qualification requirements by considering microstructural influences on fatigue performance, reducing variability across material suppliers and improving supply chain resilience.
- Accelerated qualification for Additive Manufacturing – Applied in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to streamline the qualification of additively manufactured materials, significantly reducing required experiments (shortening timelines from years to months) and cutting qualification costs by up to $2 million.
Fatigue Toolkit key features:
- 3D digital microstructure generation – Statistical digital twin of grain size, orientation, morphology, inclusions, and porosity.
- Material model calibration – Uses cyclic stress-strain data to enable custom calibration of plasticity models.
- Customisable loading scenarios – Supports varied multi-axial or uniaxial strain states, strain ratios, and fatigue cycles.
- Multi-stage fatigue prediction – Tracks fatigue life from crack incubation to long crack growth predicting full fatigue life in high and low cycle fatigue.
- Streamlined CPFEM integration – Enables computationally efficient, physics-based fatigue simulations.
- Component-scale fatigue analysis – Integrates with finite element simulations for real-world fatigue predictions.
Seamless integration with alloy design toolkit
The toolkit expands ICMD®’s capabilities beyond static property analysis, enabling fatigue life prediction directly from alloy composition and processing parameters. It includes validated models for key engineering alloys such as nickel-based superalloys (e.g. IN625, IN100), titanium alloys (e.g. Ti64), high-strength aluminium (e.g. AA7075-T6), and martensitic steels (e.g. Ferrium C64).
Data security & compliance
Data security is a high priority within the ICMD® platform, so users can focus on pushing the boundaries of material science. QuesTek is ISO 27001 and SOC 1 certified, ensuring compliance with industry-leading security standards. The platform employs advanced encryption policies to safeguard proprietary data, keeping intellectual property secure while users leverage fatigue modelling capabilities.
