August Wöhler

August Wöhler ( born June 22, 1819 in Soltau, † March 21, 1914 in Hannover ) was a German engineer. He explored the materials steel and iron. The eponymous SN curve represents the relationship between fatigue life and stress amplitude for a material under cyclic loading dar.

Life

Wöhler was born in 1819 as the son of a teacher. In 1835 he began studying at the Higher Trade School of Hannover. Due to his mathematical talent, he received a stipend of 100 thalers a year. After study end he had it all day working in a workshop. With good witness and a travel stipend of 100 thalers further, he moved to Berlin. From 1841 to 1843 he worked for August Borsig and then for four years at the newly founded Royal Hanoverian State Railways. In 1847 he became senior master machinist in the Lower Silesian - Märkischen railway in Frankfurt ( Oder). 1852 was acquired by the State, these Prussians and Wöhler in 1854 for the Royal. Preuss. Upper machinist appointed. Until 1869 he remained in public service and was subsequently director of the North German Aktiengesellschaft for railway requirement in Berlin. In 1874 he went to Strasbourg, where he became a railway director and member of the General Directorate of the Imperial Railways. In retirement, he joined in 1899.

Services

Before Wöhler has explored the relationship between fatigue life and stress amplitude, there has been in practical use (such as in railway operation ) repeatedly to serious accidents due to broken axles, although mechanical parts were correctly interpreted in the sense of classical, static strength.

On 19 October 1875, the locomotive derailed AMSTETTEN on the Salzburg -Linz and then came to rest upright. Cause of the derailment was a broken wheel tire, which stress the continuous circulation had not withstood. The fact that the alternating stressed material has a lower capacity than the statically loaded, was not yet known. These correlations were only uncovered by August Wöhler.

According to him, the SN test was an attempt to determine the fatigue strength named.

Honors

• On May 2, 1883 he was awarded the Medal for Merit to the construction industry " in silver ".
• In 1901 he was one of the first to receive the honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Berlin.
• In honor of Wöhler's a road and the junior high school named after him in his home town of Soltau.
• Since 2001, the German Association for Materials Research and Testing eV, Berlin gives the " August Wöhler Medal" for outstanding achievements in the field of mechanics of materials, fatigue strength and fracture mechanics.