Under fluctuating / cyclic stresses, failure can occur at loads considerably lower than tensile or yield strengths of material under a static load: Fatigue
Estimated to causes 90% of all failures of metallic structures (bridges, aircraft, machine components, etc.)
Fatigue failure is brittle-like (relatively little plastic deformation) - even in normally ductile materials. Thus sudden and catastrophic!
Applied stresses causing fatigue may be axial (tension or compression), flextural (bending) or torsional (twisting).
Fatigue failure proceeds in three distinct stages: crack initiation in the areas of stress concentration (near stress raisers), incremental crack propagation, final catastrophic failure.